People Come First

Her show at the New York Met in 2021 had people queuing round the block.

Last year she was at Le Centre Pompidou (Un regard engagé) and now she is at the Barbican in a blockbuster called Hot Off The Griddle – a perplexing title for an exhibition of work by an artist who died in 1984 and that has been shown so recently in New York and Paris. However, she is not well known in the UK and so her work comes hot off the griddle to me but not sunny-side up.

She is Alice Neel (1900 – 1984) and she painted a good bit of the 20th century. If you see an Alice Neel you might be drawn to it or you mightn’t. If you see so much of her work over such a long span at the Barbican she comes to life. Not a life many of us would choose. In 1925 she married Cuban artist, Carlos Enríquez Gómez, and lived in Havana rather comfortably with her husband, in-laws, a daughter and seven servants. Their daughter died in infancy of diphtheria – an illness that had claimed Alice’s brother. Never mind, they had another child and moved to New York. What could possibly go wrong? Only that Carlos buggered off back to Cuba with the child and Alice had a nervous breakdown. She recovered but was impoverished. Is the mettle of great artists forged in adversity? I like that turn of phrase.

Much of her later portraiture is surprisingly conventional – indeed the sort of thing hanging in board rooms celebrating a past director. Two are not and they are the two you will remember. In 1970 she painted Andy Warhol.

Yes, he is wearing a girdle as he had just been stabbed. Yes, he does look a bit saggy in the torso department and yes, he does wear highly polished brown lace-ups. As in much of her work the background seems incomplete but it draws the eye to her subject – looking withdrawn and constipated.

At the end of her life, in her 80th year, she painted an equally uncompromising self portrait.

There is much to ponder on after this exhibition and no better place to do so than Apulia by Smithfield Market, where food comes first. It’s not as glamorous as the website may suggest but the cooking is good and £18 for a two course set lunch, or an entry-level pizza at £9, with the house white cheekily priced at £26 is not to be sniffed at in these inflationary and unsettling times.