As Alice Neel: Hot Off The Griddle opens at the Barbican in London, Olivia Laing, Hilton Als, Katy Hessel and Eleanor Nairne speak on the legacy of the artist who deftly mixed paint with politics
great professor, Kenneth Silver, showed a portrait that Alice had painted of Linda Nochlin. I was so curious about this work, so I went to the library and started reading a book of her work, and I realised that a lot of the portraits that she had done were of people of colour in Harlem, where she lived. I was so fascinated by her depiction of that community.
It was such an incredible act of generosity on his part; we didn’t know each other very well. But it was an opportunity for that work, that had such resonance for me as an undergraduate, to be seen. [Curating the show] was really goose pimply because her work is so powerful that you can actually feel the souls of her sitters. It was almost as if, collectively, this idea that people of colour that she had admired or thought of during her time living in Harlem were given an audience. The pictures hadn’t really been seen that much. It was a goose-pimply moment for them to exhale, and to be in space.
“Alice’s politics get overlooked, and her interest in other people. Given where she came from, she shouldn’t have ended up doing the work that she did. Her ability to not look away from the sitter, to not look away from the soul, and to see the rewards and damages of being human, is remarkable. “In a world dominated by movement – TikTok, Instagram, all of that stuff – it’s wonderful to be in a space where each image gives you pause, and that you have reflection. Her work is reflection based on reflection. So, to have those moments where you can actually be together with an image and to look into the image and have it look into you is remarkably different than most image intake these days.
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