Alice Neel爱丽丝·尼尔：投注的目光 An Engaged Eye
爱丽丝·尼尔（Alice Neel）是20世纪的伟大肖像画家，她充满活力、表现主义的画作揭示了她令人窒息的情感强度。从探索损失和悲伤的作品到共产主义政治艺术，尼尔的作品在整个1900年代推动了社会正义的边界。
她对捕捉人类真相的执着是显而易见的：她画那些被社会拒绝的人，遭受社会或性别压迫的受害者、拉美和波多黎各移珉、被排斥在知识精英之外的非裔美国作家、挣扎着抚养孩子的单身母媇、同性恋夫妇，所有都坦诚地呈现在尼尔的画笔下。她毫不留情地描绘着女性的身体，为从男性目光中夺回裸体迈出了开创性的一步，而她的艺术中所蕴含的行动主义至今仍与观众产生共鸣。
本书展现了一位与20世纪前卫艺术风格相悖的具象画家，强调了她对其艺术的政治和社会承诺。本回顾展分为两个主题部分：社会不公和性别平权斗争。展览展出了约60幅绘画、素描，以及大量文件。从她1920年代的第壹批作品开始，直至她去世前不久的※后一幅令人回味的自画像，这是关于爱丽丝·尼尔的决定性论述。
One of the greatest portrait artists of the 20th century, Alice Neel’s vibrant, expressionistic paintings revealed a breath-taking depth of emotion within her subjects. From works exploring loss and grief, to communist political art, Neel's work pushed boundaries of social justice throughout the 1900s.
Her dedication to capturing the truth of humanity is evident: she painted those rejected by society, the victims of social or gendered oppression. Latin American and Puerto Rican immigrants, African-American writers excluded from the intellectual elite, single mothers struggling to raise their children, homosexual couples – all were presented with equal candidness by Neel’s brush. Her unflinching approach to the female body took a ground-breaking step towards reclaiming the nude from the male gaze, and the activism inherent to her art resonates with viewers to this day.
This book highlights Neel’s political and social commitment to her art, as a figurative painter at odds with the artistic styles of the avant-gardes of her time. Structured in two thematic parts – social injustice and gender inequality – this retrospective includes some 60 paintings and drawings as well as numerous documents. Following the artist from her first works in the 1920s to her final evocative self-portrait, made shortly before her death, this is the defining treatise on Alice Neel.