John Rothschild – my daily art display

Alice Neel. Part 4 – José Santiago Negrón

Alice Neel (1900–1984) was one of the most significant American painters of the 20th century. Her psychologically charged portraits tell intimate and unconventional stories, as much about people living on the margins of society and in subcultures as about the New York cultural elite and her own family. Alice Neel led an exceptionally interesting life as a single parent and a feminist in a time when the world of art was largely male-dominated.

Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki

Alice Neel Exhibition 10.6.2016 – 2.10.2016

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Fishing Pier, Spring Lake by Alice Neel (1938)

Alice spent the summer of 1934 with her mother and father in a cottage at Spring Lake, New Jersey, a short distance from the beach. She was still with John Rothschild, who had help fund the buying of the single storey, red-shingle cottage in 1935 and he, besotted with Alice, had left his second wife in the summer of that year. Sadly for John, it was a one-way relationship as she was often very rude to him and would often refer to him as the “money man” but she would never dispense of his company even when she had other love interests, and to be fair to her, he too had many other affairs whilst being close to Alice.

Neel completed a portrait of John in 1935 entitled John with Hat in which we see him in a white suit wearing a hat with the sea as the background. In an interview with Patricia Hills in 1982, Neel talked about the painting and voiced her dislike of Rothschild’s character:

“…I painted him in a hat, that’s when I decided to get rid of him……I thought anybody that could take that much joy out of the hat and suit, there was something wrong with him……He was utterly empty. He really had the makings of a voyeur in that way…”

Of course she didn’t dump John. Maybe sense prevailed or as she put it:

“…But I didn’t really get rid of him because he kept pursuing me and I had such a hard life that it was very nice to go to Longchamps or the Harvard club for dinner…”

It was the 1930’s and America at this time was in the middle of the Great Depression and the labour classes were suffering badly. One of the great poets and novelist of the time, who encapsulated in his work those desperate times, was Kenneth Fearing and he was depicted in a 1935 painting by Alice Neel. Fearing was a fervent left wing radical and Marxist and co-founder of the Partisan Review, a literary and arts magazine with close ties with the Communist Party, USA. He championed the cause of the downtrodden worker and is depicted in one of his favourite haunts, a late night coffee shop. Fearing is illuminated by a single lightbulb, a symbol of enlightenment and modernism. It is a painting of symbolist iconography. We see him wearing his large artsy-type glasses, with a cigarette dangling from his lips, reading a book which is propped up in front of him. Alice Neel depicted a skeleton squeezing blood out of Fearing’s heart, which was meant to symbolise his heartfelt feelings for all the people who were suffering during the troubled times of the Depression. Fearing may not have been impressed by this iconography as when he saw the work he told Neel to remove what he termed “that Fauntleroy” from his heart. However, Neel was adamant about the inclusion saying:

“…The reason I put it there was that even though he wrote ironic poetry, I thought his heart bled for the grief of the world…”

There are a number of minor “characters” depicted in the work including, in the foreground, a baby, which was said to be Fearing’s son who was born that year, and a newlywed couple. The rest of the cast of characters formed part of a tormented world, a world of disorder and chaos, which we see going on around Fearing whilst he quietly reads his book. In the foreground there are some disfigured soldiers and bleeding corpses. In the right background we can see police beating civilians.

Another communist to feature in one of Neel’s 1935 paintings was the Irish labour organiser, Pat Whalen, a longshoreman who had organised many dock strikes. He sits at a bare wooden table in his creased and shabby coat and open-necked shirt. The background is bare. This painting is all about the man and his face, his furrowed brow and piercing blue eyes. She depicts him staring into the middle-distance of a promised future, his heavy, oversized fists clenched over a copy of the Daily Worker, which was the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) newspaper.

In September 1935, Alice Neel moved alone to an apartment in West 17^th Street in New York. She would not countenance John moving in with her so he moved to his own apartment close by. Alice would return to Spring Lake every summer but not to the small cottage but to a larger house she bought later. It was shortly after her arrival in New York that Alice and John Rothschild visited the nightclub, La Casita, and there, performing in a band, was José Santiago Négrón a handsome Puerto Rican nightclub singer and guitarist. Alice was immediately attracted to the “beautiful Latino”. He was slender, dark and handsome. He was also ten years younger than Alice and was married with a young child, Sheila. Alice acknowledged the similarity between him and her first husband as quoted by Cindy Nemser, the American art historian and writer and founder and editor of the Feminist Art Journal:

“…You know what he was? He was a substitute for my Cuban husband although he was completely different…”

During an interview with the American art historian Patricia Hills, Neel recounted that first meeting with Negron and her successful seduction of the Puerto Rican:

“…I went to the nightclub with John [Rothschild] and I had on a silver lame dress that was beautiful and José was charmed with all this wealth and elegance. Toward José I made my one aggressive action. I went down there one night, to that nightclub, and I knew José was going to want to come home with me, and he did…”

In a very short time Negron left his wife Molly and child Sheila and moved in with Alice.

In September 1936 Alice Neel completed a work entitled Nazis Murdered Jews in which she depicts a Communist organised torchlight protest at which she and some of her Works Progress Administration (WPA) colleagues took part. Neel was one of the few artists of the time that highlighted the fate of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis.

Tragedy once again struck Alice in 1937. In January that year she became pregnant, much to her delight but much to the prospective father, José Negrón’s displeasure. He threatened to leave her. In July, six months into the pregnancy she had a miscarriage. Her unborn daughter had been strangled by her own umbilical cord. Add to this heartbreak, the fact that Alice and José had money problems and this was also causing stress to their relationship. Notwithstanding this, Alice became pregnant again at the end of 1938. She must have been in a quandary as to what to do as it is known that her friend John Rothschild gave her money for an abortion and although she accepted the gift, she spent it on a phonograph!

The imminent birth of her child made Alice and José abandon the bohemian life of Greenwich Village and move to a quieter apartment in East 107^th Street in the Spanish Harlem neighbourhood of Upper Manhattan and it is in this area where she would remain for the next twenty-four years. This neighbourhood proved a wonderful place for her to paint pictures of her surroundings and the many characters who lived there.

Life with José Negrón was good. In a 1969 interview she mused joyfully about those days referring to her then unborn child:

“…I was out in nightclubs every night. I did the tango, the rhumba, all those dances. Richard is the product of nightclubs…”

On September 14^th 1939 Alice gave birth to her first son. Alice and José called him Neel Santiago but this strange combination of Christian name and surname, Neel Neel, was later dropped and he became known as Richard Neel. In December 1935, less than three months after the birth of his son, José Negrón walked out of the relationship with Neel, This was the second time he did this, having left his wife Molly and their daughter, Stella, to live with Alice. José Negrón’s nephew Ralph Marrero commented on the relationship break-up:

“…I don’t think Alice was interested in staying in touch with José. Alice was more interested in her art and José was interested in himself…”

Alice put a different spin on the event in an interview with Jonathan Brand in 1969. She stated:

“…Of course José should never have done what he did. It was wrong…..He never should have left like that. I could have tried to stop him but the whole thing sickened me. I thought it was so frivolous. We had lived together for five years…..why pick this time when this little kid is maybe four or five months old and just leave like that? I thought it was frightful…”

José Negrón had never married Alice but would later go on to marry two more times and, although born a Catholic, ended up becoming an Episcopal priest.

One of the most moving paintings Alice Neel did featuring José Negrón’s family was one entitled T.B. Harlem which she completed in 1940, a year after José had left the family home. It was a painting which drew attention to the poverty and social isues of the time and yet never lost sight of the individuality of the sitter. In this painting, Neel depicted José’s brother Carlos Negrón. Carlos was just twenty-four at the time of the painting and had, two years earlier, moved from Puerto Rico to Spanish Harlem. At this time tuberculosis spread in overcrowded urban neighbourhoods, and at the time of the painting, the only available treatments to counteract the disease were radical. In the painting we see Carlos with a bandage on his chest covering the wound from his thoracoplasty, a procedure that was originally designed to permanently collapse the cavities of pulmonary tuberculosis by removing the ribs from the chest and by so doing, rest the tuberculosis-infected lung by removing ribs. Although it is a good likeness of Carlos, Neel distorted and elongated his neck and arms. In the painting Alice has used heavy, dark lines to emphasize and flatten Carlos’ silhouette and the lines around his wound draw attention to the sunken misshapenness of his left side. Carlos’ face conveys a sense of dignity. His right hand lies across his chest in a pose which we saw in traditional images of the martyred Christ.

………to be continued.

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I have used numerous internet sources to put together this and the following blogs on the life and art of Alice Neel and I am currently reading a fascinating book about the artist by Phoebe Hoban entitled Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty. It is a very interesting read and one I can highly recommend.

Alice Neel’s art is being shown in a number of exhibitions in America but there are also a series of exhibitions of her work travelling around Europe at the current time:

Painter of Modern Life at the Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki

(June 10th – October 2nd 2016)

and at the

Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag, Holland

(November 5th, 2016 – February 12th 2017)

Alice Neel. Part 3 – The men in her life – Kenneth Doolittle, John Rothschild and Joe Gould

Alice Neel was finally released from hospital in September 1931, almost thirteen months after her initial breakdown. Once discharged from hospital she reacquainted herself with her friend Nadia Olyanova and her Norwegian Merchant Marine husband, Egil Hoye, who were now living in Stockton New Jersey. It was during one of her visits to her friends that September, that she meets a friend of theirs, another Merchant Marine, Kenneth Doolittle. Doolittle had joined the merchant marines at the age of sixteen and it was during his first voyage that a fellow seaman introduced him to the world of communism. Early the following year Alice and Doolittle moved in together and lived in an apartment on Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village, which was looked upon, at the time, as the centre of bohemian life, an area which was full of bohemian cafés and bars, a place where eccentricity was the norm. Alice was aware of Doolittle’s character flaws, one of which was that he was a drug addict and also a very jealous man, especially with regards to her relationships with other men. Cindy Nemser, an American art historian, writer, as well as being the founder and editor of the Feminist Art Journal. She was an activist and prominent figure in the feminist art movement who was best known for her writings on the work of women artists. She wrote an article in the magazine Art Talks regarding Alice Neel and Kenneth Doolittle in which she quotes Alice’s thoughts on her lover:

“…I lived with a sailor. A rather interesting chap who played the guitar and sang and was rather nice except that he liked dope. He had a coffee can full of opium. I didn’t dare smoke opium since I had just had this nervous breakdown, but they smoked opium at my apartment…”

In Patricia Hills 1983 book, Alice Neel, the author wrote that Alice’s mother was far from being impressed with Doolittle and wanted to separate the two lovebirds. Alice’s mother was quoted as saying:

“…Why don’t you go stay with your sister in Teaneck, instead of out there with that dirty old sailor…”

However, the relationship continued despite the maternal warning.

In May 1932, Alice took part in the first Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit. The Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit was, and still is, a biannual outdoor art festival which originated in 1931 by Jackson Pollock. Pollock, who had fallen on hard times financially, would leave his Greenwich Village studio and set up his paintings on the sidewalk in hope that it may boost sales. Now these outdoor exhibits held by local artists help them sell their paintings and also help them gain recognition for their talents. It was at this exhibition that Alice presented her 1928 work, Well Baby Clinic. In the painting we see a nurse clothed in white and holding a baby. The pristine whiteness of her uniform contrasts with the dirty off-white colour of the nursery walls. The nurse stands in the centre of the hospital ward and is surrounded by mothers feeding and cosseting their children whilst other babies can be seen lying unattended on white beds. In some ways this simplistic painting is quite disturbing, and probably offered the jaundiced view of childbirth held by the artist. Alice Neel completed the work just a fortnight after the birth of her second child, Isabetta.

Neel also exhibited a very controversial painting at the exhibition entitled Degenerate Madonna but after many vociferous protestations from the Catholic Church she was asked to remove the work. This was her take on the Madonna and Child genre

It was at this exhibition that she met a man who would be ever present throughout her life as her best friend and loyal supporter. He was John Rothschild. He had walked up to her during the exhibition and praised her work and later invited her and Doolittle to join him for drinks at his place. John was a Harvard graduate who came from a wealthy background. His family owned the travel firm, Open Road.

Kenneth Doolittle watercolour by Alice Neel (1931)

Alice’s relationship with Doolittle had intensified, however, it all came to an abrupt end in December 1934, after Doolittle, in a fit of jealous rage, slashed or burnt a large number of her early works. He was thought to have been jealous of Neel’s relationship with another man but others believed that “the other man” was her art and the amount of time she dedicated to her painting. Later Neel recalled the incident, as quoted in Wayne Kostenbaum 1997 book Alice Neel: Paintings from the Thirties:

“…Kenneth Doolittle cut up and burned about sixty paintings and two hundred drawings and watercolors in our apartment at 33 Cornelia Street. Also, he burned my clothing. He had no right to do that. I don’t think he would have done that if he hadn’t been a dope addict. He had a coffee can full of opium that looked like tar off the street. And it was a frightful act of male chauvinism: that he could control me completely. I had to run out of the apartment or I would have had my throat cut. That was a traumatic experience as he had destroyed a lot of my best work, things I had done before I ever knew he existed. It took me years to get over it….”

After the violent break up with Doolittle, Neel moved out of their apartment and being homeless went to stay with John Rothschild, and thanks to some financial help from his parents she had enough money to buy a small cottage in Spring Lake, New Jersey. At the time, Rothschild was married with children but told Alice that he loved her and left his wife and became Neel’s lover but he wanted a more formalised relationship but Neel was happy with a less prescribed liaison, added to which she was often openly scathing about his prowess as a lover. She was unconvinced regarding the future of their relationship and later that year left him and moved, to live alone, in a Manhattan apartment.

That same year Alice depicted the two of them in the bathroom after a bout of lovemaking, in a painting entitled Bathroom Scene.

Untitled (Alice Neel and John Rothschild in the Bathroom) by Alice Neel (1935)

Alice Neel who was now in her mid-thirties, depicted herself in her 1935 painting entitled Alice and John in the Bathroom as a beautiful and curvy woman, with her long red hair. We see her seated on the toilet urinating while her lover, John Rothschild, stands at the sink, urinating with an erect penis in his hand. Stephanie Buhman in her 2009 article in on-line art magazine artcritical describes the painting:

“…Neel can be seen sitting on a toilet seat while urinating. John stands at the sink, urinating with an erect penis in his hand. Various shades of red accentuate details, such as Alice’s pubic hair, the toilet seat, John’s slippers and the head of his penis. Alice’s legs are turned outward, her arms crossed over her head, almost taking on the posture of an Indian deity. The scene could not be more humbling in its honesty and lack of glorification. Leaving the viewer in the role of a voyeur, Alice and John in the Bathroom is an ode to the pure sense of trust and privacy that two individuals, despite all imperfections, can experience when truly caring for each other…”

The work in no way beautifies the lovemaking which had just happened and I wonder what was in her mind when she painted this shockingly explicit work.

The first exhibition of the Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit was so successful that a second one was held that November. The second event was even bigger than the first with over three hundred artists participating. Juliana Force, who was the Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and who had endorsed the exhibition, was so impressed with the works on show that she invited many of the exhibitors to meet her and talk about their work and their artistic struggle to survive financially

At the end of 1933, Alice Neel enrolled in the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), a government-funded program run under the auspices of the Whitney Museum of American Art and its director Juliana Force, aided by Vernon C. Porter. In the 1977 book, New York City WPA Art: Then and and Now, she recalled the time:

“…The first I heard of the W.P.A. was when in 1933 I received a letter from the Whitney Museum asking me to come and see them. I was interviewed by a young man who asked me ‘How would you like to paint for $30 a week?’ This was fabulous as most of the artists had nothing in those days and in fact there were free lunches for artists in the Village … All the artists were on the project. If there had been no such cultural projects there might

An interesting painting by Neel was completed in 1933 whilst she was part of the Works Progress Administration, which was a New Deal program to help the impoverished and unemployed. In the work we see a scene which Neel could empathize with as she was then also struggling financially. Before us we see a room at The Russell Sage Foundation, which had been established by Margaret Olivia Sage in 1907. The aim of the foundation was to try and improve the social and living conditions in the United States.

Investigation of Poverty, Russell Sage Foundation by Alice Neel (1933)

In the painting, at the centre rear, we see an elderly grey-haired lady facing side on to us. She is dressed all in black and we notice that she has her head buried in her hands. Her black clothing probably signifies that she is a widow. We see her seated in front of a small table around which are her interrogators. They look directly at her and one of them seems to be talking to her. From looking at her, caste your eyes on her inquisitors. How would you describe their expressions –reflective and yet detached? It is an unusual grouping. The men are all wearing suits and ties and the women all wear hats. In the left foreground, with his back to the viewer, a man sits leaning forward, apparently one of the questioners. The painting is all about the despair of the central character even though we cannot see her face. Despite the fact that the people investigating her status seem to be well-meaning, the woman is clearly bewildered by the situation that has necessitated her being at this meeting, a prerequisite if she wants financial assistance. Alice Neel, through this painting, captures the essence of what life was like for the poor during the Depression. What could be more demeaning than an old lady having to suffer the questions posed by the “suits” in order to gain financial help?. In the right foreground we see two men, side on to us, who are next in line to be questioned. One of them has a white moustache and is well dressed in suit and tie. By the look of his expression he too seems overwhelmed by the ordeal

That year Alice Neel completed a somewhat controversial painting of Joe Gould. For over three decades Gould, who was a homeless Harvard graduate, and a Greenwich Village eccentric who went from bar to bar telling those who would listen to him about the book he was writing. It was not just any book, he said it was to be the longest book ever written, entitled An Oral History of Our Time. There must have been something appealing about him as he was well supported by the Greenwich Village artists, poets and writers of the time.

The stories of his large tome spread and a journalist, Joseph Mitchell, on the New Yorker wrote a couple of pieces about Gould and his famous book. Sadly for Mitchell the book was just a figment of Gould’s imagination ! However, Gould became a local legend thanks to all the publicity and it went to his head as he truly believed that his fame was well deserved and that now he was a great attraction especially for the women. It was probably because of his belief that he was such a lady’s man and a great lover, again, like the book, probably a figment of his imagination, resulted in the way Alice Neel depicted him in her 1933 controversial painting, Joe Gould, which an art critic described as “a symphony of cocks”

In 1934 Alice receives a letter from her estranged husband Joe Enriquez, who on on the news of his mother’s death, had left Europe and returned to his home in Cuba. In the letter he asked Alice to consider a reconciliation but by now she had other men in her life, her lover Kenneth Doolittle and her ardent admirer John Rothschild and so she declined the “invitation” and she and her husband were never to meet again.

In the early thirties Neel completed a number of nude paintings. There was nothing erotic or genteel about them, on the contrary these paintings and sketches were down to earth “warts and all” honest depictions of nude men and women.

In her 1935 watercolour on paper work entitled Alienation she depicted herself lying voluptuously in bed while her friend and lover John Rothschild stands over her. It is interesting to note that at this time the painting of nudity was not considered appropriate for a female artist to pursue.

Another early example is Nadya and Nona which she completed in 1933. It is a challenging and provocative painting of two nude women lying in bed which scrutinised the subject of sexuality but at the same time avoided any erotic or seductive nuances.

It is around this time that another man comes into her life. He is a married nightclub singer Jose Santiago Negron………………….

…………………to be continued.