Exceptional Works: Alice Neel

Allen Ginsberg, 1966

Oil on canvas
 50 x 35 1/4 inches
 127 x 89.5 cm

“In their depictions of individual beings, Neel’s images go beyond painting in her figures’ psychic honesty, they press out at us.”

—Roberta Smith, 2021

Alice Neel (1900–1984) is widely regarded as one of the foremost American artists of the twentieth century. While the avant-garde of the 1940s and 1950s renounced figuration, Neel developed her signature approach, creating daringly honest paintings of the people around her.

Created at the height of the 1960s, Neel’s painting of the celebrated American writer and Beat poet Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) is a striking example of the artist’s ability to depict her subjects with unfazed accuracy, honesty, and compassion, capturing the physical and psychological state of the individual at a given moment in their life. Calling herself a “collector of souls,” Neel is acclaimed for not only capturing the truth of the person but also reflecting the era in which she lived.

Allen Ginsberg in Kansas, 1966

Ginsberg was a leading member of the famous Beat generation of writers who emerged around 1944 out of Columbia University. He moved to San Francisco in the 1950s, and in 1956 he published his best-known poem, “Howl,” to both great acclaim and controversy; in 1957 there was an obscenity trial against the poem due to its homosexual content, much of which was based on Ginsberg’s relationship with the poet Peter Orlovsky (1933–2010). In his work, Ginsberg pioneered a colloquial, vernacular style and wrote openly about his identity, gay desire, and drug use—in effect challenging the obscenity laws of the time and paving the way for younger marginalized artists and writers to express themselves freely.

Alice Neel with Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky on the set of Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie’s Pull My Daisy, 1959. Artwork © John Cohen Trust, courtesy L. Parker Stephenson Photographs, New York

Throughout her career, Neel was committed to depicting the human condition, painting people from many walks of life. Her subjects include politicians, philanthropists, writers, performers, and artists.

Neel met Ginsberg in 1959 on the set of Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie’s film Pull My Daisy, in which they appeared alongside other Beat poets and artists. “I looked like a conventional American type,” Neel recalled. “I went (to the first day of shooting) and there was Allen Ginsberg. So I said, ‘Oh, are you taking the part of Allen Ginsberg?’ And he said, ‘No I am Allen Ginsberg.’”  At the memorial service held for Neel after her death at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1985, Ginsberg read his poem "White Shroud."

Alice Neel, Allen Ginsberg, 1966 (detail)

Allen Ginsberg, second from left, joins psychologist Dr. Timothy Leary on stage for the multimedia presentation "Illumination of the Buddha," The Village Gate, New York, December 6, 1966. Photo by Fred W. McDarrah. MUUS Collection via Getty Images

In this rarely seen work by Neel, the artist painted from memory after seeing Ginsberg perform with Dr. Timothy Leary in 1966. Neel was attracted to her sitters’ individuality and the details of their mannerisms, poses, and choice of clothing. Here, the poet sits cross-legged next to a glowing candle, his torso and open-mouthed face surrounded by abstract, orblike forms. The composition mimics the gritty, improvisational, and often frenetic style of poetry for which Ginsberg and the Beats were known, and speaks to the hallucinatory quality of their performances at the time.

Installation view, At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World, David Zwirner, Los Angeles, 2024

“[This painting] was a way of Alice describing herself through another person, as a revolutionary.... It was ... about who she was and where anguish can lead you, which is liberation and freedom as an artist.”

—Hilton Als, 2024

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