ALICE NEEL - A Collector of Souls
Alice Neel was a pioneer among-US American women artists. She doggedly pursued a career as a painter of people, or in her own words, a “collector of souls.” Neel’s pictures are unsparing, authentic, and truthful. In her portraits, she investigates the innermost lives of her subjects, the individual’s psychology. This American artist was never fashionable, never in lockstep with the avant-garde. Moreover, her work often addresses socially relevant and even provocative topics. Her portraits reveal far more than the personal sides of her subjects. For these paintings also provide a key to Alice Neel herself, to her biography, her intimate experiences, the times she lived through. The starting point for this search for clues about her world is Spanish Harlem, where Neel lived for 30 years. It was here that she produced the greater part of her oeuvre. Again and again, the film turns from her portraits and archival photographs to the lively streets of New York City, touring the neighborhood in search of insight into Alice Neel , exploring the significance of Spanish Harlem and its residents as the origin of and breeding ground for her artistic achievement.
