"Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore"
Marlene Dumas on Alice Neel
When Alice Neel started to become better known in America in the early 1970’s, I was an art student in South Africa. By that time, in my existential search for the human face and figure, I knew the work of Bacon and Hockney and looked at the photographs of Diana Arbus and the silk screens of Andy Warhol, but no-one showed me Alice Neel. However, when I did finally stumble on a reproduction of her work somewhere, it immediately stuck. Strangely, when I got to Holland in the late 70’s, no one there knew about her either.
I never met Alice Neel in person. It was not because she was a woman or had a difficult life that I fell for her. It was not because of her witty writings that I was attracted to her work. I only discovered that to my surprise, much later on.
