What emerges from the portraits of Alice Neel is a sense of the artist’s own compassionate decency
A More Perfect Union
How curators interpret figural ceramics from long ago—or, indeed, walls full of portrait paintings—may seem of modest importance, compared to the seismic shifts in public consciousness that have occurred this year. But it’s of such building blocks that a new, egalitarian edifice will be built. It’s a project we will all need to work on, together.
Alice Neel and Carlos Enriques: Starting out in the twenties
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, Summer 2010 | Fig. 2. Carlos Enríquez by Alice Neel (1900–1984), 1926. Oil on canvas, 30 ¼ by 24 inches. Estate ofAlice Neel; photograph by Malcolm Varon © Estate of Alice Neel. Fig. 3. Alice Neel by Carlos Enríquez (1900–1957), 1927. Inscribed “La Habana/1927” at lower right. Oil on canvas, 23 ⅝ by 19 ⅝ inches. …