There have been innumerable accounts of the exhilarating quality of New York City in the mid-20th century. Despite all its shortcomings in those decades, it was described as a place of possibility and beautiful, if sometimes unsettling, art. Growing up but a bridge away in Brooklyn, Hilton Als, cultural critic and author of White Girls, was similarly entranced by the island of Manhattan and how the “glittery gay world” that was its cultural scene welcomed difference. As one of the documenters of life in New York in the 20th century, Alice Neel’s subjects were the writers, artists, intellectuals, dancers, sex workers and poets that made up this magical queer world. Her unwavering commitment to being a humanist who sought the truth at the centre of a person’s psyche afforded her portraits a sense of tenderness; she depicted her subjects as they were, not who they presented themselves to be in the public eye. 

It is this quality of Neel’s work that drew Als to the artist and to curating the exhibition, At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World (which was first shown at David Zwirner’s Los Angeles location in September 2024 and is now on view at Victoria Miro in London till March 8). At Home is Als’ second curatorial project focusing on Neel. It was preceded by Uptown, which presented Neel’s portraits of people of colour, especially those who surrounded her in her neighbourhood of Spanish Harlem. At Home is similarly focused on Neel’s social milieu, but this time on the paintings of people from the queer world who, regardless of their sexual orientation, represented, according to Als, “a commitment to difference”. Als elaborates on this curatorial impetus: “As I was working on Uptown, I began thinking about the present show and the relationship between these two marginalised groups of people she represented. It was fascinating how Alice had recorded and been interested in both.”

The work on display is a stunning record of queer life and culture in the city. It includes portraits of artists and thinkers such as Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara and the famed gallerist John Cheim, alongside vitrines filled with photographs of her sitters, newspaper clippings on Neel and other ephemera from the mid-late 20th century that animate the show. 

Below, we take a look at At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World and what we can learn from Neel’s unique artistic sensibilities. 

SHE PAINTED EVERYONE: FRIENDS, ACQUAINTANCES AND ENEMIES 

Many friends are immortalised on Neel’s canvases. The radical sex-positive performance artist and porn star Annie Sprinkle, who is painted wearing her leather fetish gear, is one example. She met Neel through a mutual friend, Dennis Florio, a fine art framer whose stunning portrait in a red velvet suit is also part of the show. The exhibition also features a painting of the artist Richard Gibbs in 1965, placed next to a portrait of a collegiate-looking young man with neatly combed hair and a long-sleeved blue shirt titled “Richard Gibbs's Friend”, highlighting Neel’s tendency to paint anyone who piques her interest, regardless of their celebrity or social capital. She extended this grace to subjects whose lived experience or political position opposed her own. Neel famously even invited the FBI agents who arrived at her home in 1950 to interrogate her to sit for a portrait. While they declined her offer, it demonstrates Als’ categorisation of Neel as someone who “found such joy in difference”. He elaborates, “Ultimately, I wanted viewers of the exhibition to see how Neel looked without judgement at worlds that were at that time considered underground.” 

SHE DEPICTED THE LIVED-IN BODY 

Questions about ageing, motherhood and the “lived-in” body are central to Neel’s work. Perhaps most visibly in “Self-portrait”, Neel turns her humanist gaze onto herself, depicting her naked body at 80 as it was: loose skin and all. Similarly, in her infamous portrait of Andy Warhol, he is stripped down, exposing his injured body and pain to the spectator. In her paintings of pregnant women, she would forego archaic notions of false modesty attributed to pregnancy and would paint them naked, often reclining on a sofa with large bellies and pubic hair. This tendency to focus on the unsettling parts of the physical body separated Neel from an art-historical canon that seemed (and often still seems) so singularly focused on beauty and perfection. 

HER POLITICS MATERIALISED ON AND OFF THE CANVAS

Neel’s relationship with politics was not superficial. Discourse about the artist’s life and practice often includes several anecdotes of her studio surrounded by books by Marx and Lenin, her participation in the women’s liberation movement and how the FBI monitored her during the height of the Cold War. She was even once heard criticising students for their ignorance of America’s involvement in the bloody coup in Chile that resulted in Pinochet’s military dictatorship, asking, “How can you be an artist and not know about politics?” In At Home, you encounter how she painted her politics in the portrait from 1932 titled “Martin Jay”, which depicted James Leippert, an active member of the communist party, in an ink drawing of the feminist Adrienne Rich and a copy of the August 1970 copy of Time Magazine that featured Neel’s striking portrait of Kate Millet, amongst several other nods to her political standing and relationships with queer activists.

SHE MADE THE PEOPLE SHE PAINTED FEEL SEEN 

There is something overwhelmingly intimate about gazing at Neel’s portraits. Perhaps it can be attributed to how her subjects seem close enough to the edge of the canvas to touch, or how their facial expressions are charged with the vulnerability of truly being seen. Art historian Eleanor Naine shares that Neel’s works often record her encounter with a person, allowing her to represent them in what would perhaps be their rawest, most fragile form. Als emphasises how this affective characteristic of Neel’s portraits has reverence today, “I think people have always been interested in portraiture, but given the desperation of these times, politically and otherwise, the sane people of the world – the true humanists – want to seek out and hold all those others who are in the swim of being alone. Alice Neel gave us the opportunity to touch and understand each other, even if for a little bit.”

Visit the gallery above for a closer look at a selection of the artworks and ephemera on display in the exhibition. 

At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World is curated by Hilton Als and is showing at Victoria Miro, London, until March 8, 2025.