Alice Neel is a name I’ve long been familiar with but, like most people, I suspect, I had no specific file on her painting until the Metropolitan Museum mounted its spectacular show of her work, “People Come First.” We finally got around to seeing it a week before it closed. I love the amazing cross-section of New Yorkers she painted, with a big focus on bohemian life, working people, queer artists, and casually explicit sexuality. Others have written more eloquently and more knowledgeably about the work in this exhibition. I’m just going to share a few of the pictures that called out to me.
Waiting in line to get into the Alice Neel exhibition, everyone got to spend time contemplating this enigmatic canvas:
another eye opens 