Portraiture by Alice Neel

July 9th, 2010

Just discovered the work of Alice Neel today and found out that I missed her retrospective at MFAH. I’ll have to keep my eye out for her work. It’s totally nutso incredible! Her portraits are confrontations of humanity but make you wonder what is going on behind the eyes of her subjects. When I look at the pieces that were in the show “Painted Truths” I see the human figure as a boundary and subordinate to what is going on in the subject’s mind. They are thinking about something, perhaps about some idea or ideas. That would truly be a painted truth.