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Female Nude Portraits

The summer of 1930 was period in her life that she describes “as one of her most productive” because that was when she painted her earliest female nudes. It was during the time where she felt most vulnerable because of her divorce and it was right before she was institutionalized. Neel’s subject matter changed, she went from painting portraits of ordinary people, family, friends, strangers, and well -known art critiques to female nudes. The female nude in Western art had always represented a “Woman” as vulnerable, anonymous, passive, and ageless and the quintessential object of the male gaze. However, Neel’s female nudes contradicted and “satirized the notion and the standards of the female body." By this sharp contrast to this prevailing idealistic idea of how the female body should be portrayed in art, art historians believe that she was able to free her female sitters from this prevailing ideology that in turn gave them an identity and power. Through her use of “expressive line, vibrant palette, and psychological intensity”, Neel did not depict the human body in a realistic manner; it was the way she was able to capture and dignify her sitters’ psychological and internal standpoint that made the portraits realistic. For this reason, many art critics today describe Neel’s female nudes as truthful and honest portraits. However, during the time her female nudes were seen and thought of as very controversial by the rest of the art world, as she was purposely-questioning women’s traditional role through her canvas. In other words, it is believed that Neel challenged the norms of women’s role in the household and in everyday life from her paintings.

Among one of Neel’s well known early female nude portraits is the one of Ethel Ashton (1930) located Tate Modern Museum, London. Neel depicted her school friend, Ethel, as many art historians described as “nearly crippled with self conscious by her own exposure.” Ethel’s body was exposed in a crouched seated position, where she was able to look at the viewer with directly in the eye. Ethel’s eyes were commonly described as “soul full” that expressed a sense a fear within them. Neel painted her friend through a distorted scale that added to the idea of “vulnerability and fearfulness”. The artist herself described the female figure when looking at her work “She’s almost apologizing for living. And look at all the furniture she has to carry all the time.” By furniture the artist “referred to her heavy thighs, bulging stomach, and pendulous breasts.” The formal elements of the painting, light and shadow, the brushstrokes, and the color are suggested to add pathos and humor to the work but they are done in a precise manner to convey a certain tone, which is vulnerability. The painting was exhibited 43 years later at the Alumni Exhibition, where it was brutality criticized by many art critics and the general public. The reaction that the painting received was a firm dislike as it was thought it was going against the norms of how female nudes were supposed to be depicted. Ether, the female nude, saw it on display and “stormed out of rage.” The particular painting of the female nude was neither sexual nor flattering to the female form. However, Neel’s aim was not to paint the female body in an idealistic way, she wanted to paint in a truthful and honest manner. For this reason she thought of herself as a realist painter.

Pregnant Female Nudes

By the mid 60’s many of Neel’s female friends had gotten pregnant which inspired her to paint a series of these women nude. Neel believed that pregnancy was a basic fact of life and society neglected this important stage in a women’s life. The portraits truthfully highlight instead of hiding the physical changes and emotional anxieties that coexist with childbirth. When she was asked why she painted pregnant nudes, Neel replied,

“It isn’t what appeals to me, it’s just a fact of life. It’s a very important part of life and it was neglected. I feel as a subject it’s perfectly legitimate, and people out of a false modesty, or being sissies, never show it, but it is a basic fact of life. Also, plastically, it is very exciting… I think its part of the human experience. Something that primitives did, but modern painters have shied away from because women were always done as sexual objects. A pregnant woman has a claim staked out; she is not for sale”

Neel chose to paint the “basic facts of life” and strongly believed that this form of subject matter is worthy enough to be painted in the nudes, which was what distinguished her from other artists of her time. The pregnant nudes suggested by the art historian, Ann Temkin, allowed Neel to “collapse the imaginary dichotomy that polarizes women into the chaste Madonna or the specter of the dangerous whore” as the portraits where of ordinary women that one sees all around, but not in art.

One of her well-known works that depicted a pregnant female nude is the portrait of Margret Evans Pregnant (1978) located at in a private collection. Margret was painted while sitting on upright chair that forced her to expose her pregnant stomach even more, which became the central point in the canvas. Right behind the chair a mirror was placed which allowed the viewer to see the back of her head and neck. However, the mirrored reflection did not look anything like Margret frontal portrait. The motive behind this particular section of the painting remains unknown but it is believed that “The mirrored image is an uncanny double of the sitter and the artist, presaging older age.” Art historians like Jeremy Lewison assume that reflection is of an older and wiser woman and hypothesized that it might have been a combination of Margret and Neel’s reflection. Several art critics today have frequently characterized Neel as a “sort of artist –sociologists.” Through her portraits, Neel was able to merge objectivity with subjectivity, realism with expressionism that resulted to a new genre of portraiture. It was important to the artist to include her “own response” to the art work and knew that she could not be an objective observer." For this reason, an anthropologists/ sociologist Sara Lawrence Lightfoot believes that “Neel positioned her sitters in relation to her own changing situation.” Therefore, it was no coincidence that Neel included an old women’s reflection in the mirror behind the naked pregnant figure.

Neel’s Self Portrait/ Last Paintings Neel painted herself in her eightieth year of life, seated on a chair in her studio. She presented herself fully nude. She wore her glasses and held her paintbrush on right hand and an old cloth on the other hand. The white color of her hair and the several creases and folds of her bare skin indicated her old age. As she painted herself seated on the chair her body faced away from the viewer while head was turned towards the viewer. The portrait was completed in 1980 but she had started to paint it five years earlier, in which she abandoned had abandoned for a period of time. However, she was encouraged by her son Richard to complete it and came back to in her early 80’s as she was also invited to take part in an exhibition of Self-Portraits at the Harold Reed Gallery in New York. When Neel’s portrait was showcased it generated a high level of attention because it was traditional for women to have self -portraits and that were presented in elderly and nude form. Neel painted herself in a truthful manner as she exposed her saggy breasts and belly for everyone to see. Yet again in her last painting, she challenged the social norms of what was acceptable to be depicted in art. Her self portrait was one of her last masterpieces before she died. On October 14th, 1984 Neel died with her family in New York City apartment from advanced colon cancer.