"I like to paint people who have been ruined by the rat race in New York City."

Ya gotta hand it to Andy.  There he hangs, significantly, in a blockbuster show at the Met that finally gives Alice Neel her due.  A killer quote accompanies Drella's portrait, painted within two years of his near murder by the woman who founded SCUM, the society to cut up men:  "I'm so scarred I look like a Dior dress."  It ain't pretty.

Andy Warhol, 1970 

Nor is the first solo self portrait that Neel painted, just four years before her death at 84. No narcissism or idealization of the aged human body here, just a defiant declaration of identity as a female artist wielding her paint brush right up to the end.  

Self Portrait, 1980

Neel once told Johnny Carson "I like to paint people who have been ruined by the rat race in New York City." She was way ahead of her time in depictions of gender, as well as just about every other social concern that presses today's hot-button issues. I recall Jackie Curtis (right) mostly from "Women In Revolt," Andy's satire on feminism, where she had a much harder time stealing the show from Holly Woodlawn and Candy Darling than she does here.

Jackie Curtis & Ritta Red (1970)

I'm not sure I would have recognized Curtis in this much quieter portrait.

Jackie Curtis as a Boy (1972)

It seems like Neel also tried to play the male-dominated art world game, befriending Henry Geldzahler who brought contemporary art to the Met.  Yet he failed to add Neel's work to the collection at first, dismissing it as not modern enough.  Turns out HE wasn't modern enough.  I like the "tells" that Neel employs to convey Geldzahler's sexual orientation:  the lavender wash behind his head and his extended pinky finger.

Henry Geldzahler, 1967

She codes feminism more obviously:  the exposed arm pit hair and posture of this young woman tells you almost everything you need to know.

Marxist Girl (Irene Peslikis) (1972)

Nor was Neel prudish.  She painted this Greenwich Village satyr, the devilish personification of man who thinks with his dick, in the 30s!  I guess we guys have a lot to fear from the "female gaze."

Joe Gould (1933)

Not all men were bad.  Here's the handsome philosopher she met in Cuba whose humanist, anti-abstraction credo encapsulates the theme of the exhibit:  People Come First.

Jose (1936)

Look at Neel's extraordinary use of color in this uncharacteristic profile of a prolific African American playwright.

Alice Childress (1950)

Think about how long women having been giving birth.  Now consider that hardly any Western artists painted the life-giving act before Neel (even if her style owes more than a little debt to Picasso)!

"Childbirth" (1939)

This may be my favorite work in the exhibit although it's really hard to choose.

Mother & Child" (1962)

Racial injustice mattered to Neel long before the Civil Rights movement in the 60s.  The state of Mississippi convicted Willie McGee of rape with questionable evidence and executed him, a punishment no white man ever had received for the crime.

Save Willie McGee (1950)

Interracial love could still get you arrested--or victimized--in plenty of states just as Neel was hitting her stride as a portraitist.

Rita & Hubert (1954)

Neel practiced representation by painting her neighbors.

A Spanish Boy" (1955)

Neel's immediate family, including her mother, two sons and daughter-in-law, also sat for her.

Last Sickness (1953)

Hartley on the Rocking Horse (1943)

Hartley (1966)

Ginny (1984)

Richard (1963)

And I'm not ashamed to admit that some of my enthusiasm for this exhibit stems from the banner flying in front of the Met, one of the world's foremost art museums.  God knows that gay men have figured prominently in art but when have they featured so publicly?  Thank you, Alice!