Nude and Sexuality
“But with the whole body, there are strange things going on—the flesh is falling off the bones... I always had bad feet—I have a prehensile big toe and there’s a leg that as a leg is frightful, but as a work of art, it’s gorgeous”
Alice Neel: Susan Stamberg, NPR Morning Edition, 2001
One of Alice Neel’s greatest achievements is having addressed sex and her own sexuality freely and frankly in her art. Stripped of sentiment, sexuality is reflected with delicate naturalness in the watercolors that can be seen here, which were not exhibited until the 1970s, when the prohibition against the public expression of female sexuality began to loosen.
With the nude being one of the most common genres throughout art history, and with women’s roles having been almost exclusively limited to that of mere erotic object, this subject was a special challenge for Alice Neel, who adopted it and then boldly subverted it. In Neel’s paintings, the nude body is always shown straightforwardly and with total honesty; even pregnant women, whom Neel particularly spotlighted in a revolutionary way, especially in an era whose visual culture avoided these images.