OCMA’s new summer exhibitions ‘Feel Like Home’
The way we see ourselves and the way others see us are rarely the same. In a time when filters abound, the lens through which American figurative painter Alice Neel, who was active from the 1930s to the 1980s, saw her subjects is a stark contrast to today’s selfies.
Portraitures by the renowned artist have less to do with how the subject would like to be seen and more to do with how the world, or more specifically Neel, saw them.
“She didn’t refer to her work as portraits, but called them pictures of people,” Courtenay Finn, chief curator at the Orange County Museum of Art, said of Neel. “She wasn’t being commissioned and she wasn’t trained to paint them as flattering versions of themselves, she was trying to capture the true essence of a character.”
Rather than artifacts of vanity, the paintings tell the truth.
“As a result, some of the paintings might not look the way the people who sat for them were hoping they would turn out,” said Finn.
OCMA’s new summer exhibitions includes “Alice Neel: Feels Like Home,” putting the spotlight on the native Pennsylvanian’s work.
Neel’s life spanned much of the 20th century and her work bears witness to historical events and movements of her time.
“She was born in 1900 and died in 1984 and she used to joke that she was just four weeks younger than the century,” Finn said. “But she was basically a witness to and a participant in all of the defining moments of the 20th century — the Great Depression, World Wars, Vietnam, civil rights, woman’s liberation, gay liberation — and through it all she was really committed to painting.”
Neel was also committed to figuration and representation at a time when abstraction was more fashionable. Rather than paint abstractly, Neel leaned into the details of the intimate.
“She really wanted to capture the essence of the people she painted and of the people around her, ” Finn said. “She painted friends, her own family, neighbors and her extended community.”
Neel’s first daughter was lost to diphtheria before her first birthday and her second was taken to Cuba in 1930 by her husband and fellow painter, Carlos Enríquez. The loss of her husband and child led to a nervous breakdown and a stay in the suicide ward of Philadelphia General Hospital. When she was released, she spent time in her hometown before returning to New York City, where she found her true home and chosen family.
“Feels Like Home” features her 1932 work “Movie Lobby,” which captures the opulence of the upper class, enjoying entertainment in carpeted ballrooms full of pink upholstered chairs, alongside work like 1947’s “Fish Market,” which depicts the working class butchering fish in aprons stained with blood.
“She lived in Greenwich Village, she lived in Spanish Harlem and then the Upper West Side,” said Finn. “And throughout it all she paints the people of New York through this evolving time.”
While the portraits, or pictures of people, are not necessarily painted in a flattering manner, they are painted in a loving one. Finn said the show leans into the idea of found family and community.
“The show focuses on what it means to feel like you belong and what it means to find a home, and how that can be with people, either your blood family or your chosen family or with your pets or with a place,” Finn said.
Neel’s show is accompanied by “Tony Lewis: CASUAL T,” an exhibition that highlights the Chicago-based artist’s affinity to combining art and writing. A large installation incorporates graphite, paper, collage and uses the artist’s affinity for the comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes” to tell a new story.
Upstairs at the museum, “A Guest, A Host, A Ghost” is the first U.S. museum solo exhibition by Chinese artist Yu Ji.
“Since opening our new building in October, OCMA has welcomed almost 200,000 visitors, and it is our great privilege to share the work of remarkable artistic voices like Yu Ji with as many people as possible,” Heidi Zuckerman, chief executive and director of OCMA, said in a statement.
Born in 1985 in Shanghai, China, Yu Ji uses installation, sculpture, video, and harnessing architecture to explore the relationship between bodies and the built environment.
The three new summer exhibitions are open now at the Orange County Museum of Art, 3333 Avenue of the Arts, Costa Mesa. More information can be found at ocma.art.
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