ALICE NEEL: AT HOME: ALICE NEEL IN THE QUEER WORLD
Victoria Miro is pleased to present At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World, a solo exhibition of work by Alice Neel.
January 30 - March 8, 2025
One of the foremost painters of the twentieth century, and among its most radical, Alice Neel (1900–1984) is known for her daring honesty in her pursuit of what she termed ‘the truth’ – of the individual and the broader society in which individual lives were lived. At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World highlights the artist’s career-long commitment to depicting the human condition and her practice of painting people from many walks of life.
This exhibition focuses on her paintings of people from queer communities and those who were a part of their circle. The works on view include paintings of writers, performers and artists, as well as friends and neighbours – together forming a collective portrait that both embodies and complicates an understanding of the queer world of Neel’s moment and the artist’s place within it. As Als notes, this exhibition includes ‘not just portraits of gay people but those of theorists, activists, politicians, and so on who would qualify as queer by virtue of their different take in their given field and thus the world. So doing, they reflect Alice’s own interest in and commitment to difference.’
Highlights include paintings of figures such as Frank O’Hara (one of two paintings of the poet and curator completed by Neel in 1960); the provocative Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, whom she painted from memory in 1966 after seeing him at a performance; performance artist and sexual icon Annie Sprinkle (1982); and Andy Warhol in a drawing (c.1970) inscribed to performers Jackie Curtis and Ritta Redd – further reflecting Neel’s interest in various creative and avant-garde communities.
Also on view is related archival material that illuminates the lives and accomplishments of the individuals depicted by Neel and their surrounding historical and cultural contexts. These subjects, united here through a connecting thread of difference, demonstrate the breadth of Neel’s work and the unfettered scope of her humanist vision.