Hot Off the Griddle - Alice Neel
Official catalogue of the exhibition Alice Neel: Hot Off The Griddle, which took place at the Barbican on the 16 Feb-21 May 2023.
Alice Neel was one of the great American painters of the twentieth century and a pioneer among women artists. A painter of people, Neel didn’t care about being fashionable or in step with avant-garde movements: ‘One of the reasons I painted was to catch life as it goes by,’ she explained, ‘right hot off the griddle.’
This volume, beautifully illustrated with Neel’s works, takes a unique approach to the exhibition catalogue, highlighting Neel’s understanding of the fundamentally political nature of how we look at others and what it means to feel seen. Featuring essays by critic Hilton Als, curator Eleanor Nairne, and poetry by Daisy LaFarge, the book celebrates Neel’s depth of humanity, her championing of the underdog, and the searing candour with which she viewed the world. Long a favourite of portrait lovers, Neel has recently gained an even wider 21st century audience for her intimate and powerful paintings of everyday people – work that had her crowned ‘the court painter of the underground’.