Ao convite para participar na exposição anual do Whitney seguiu-se em 1974 a primeira retrospectiva no museu de Nova Iorque: incluiu 58 pinturas desde 1933 apenas retratos, contando com muitas das suas obras hoje mais famosas, e vários retratos de artistas:
Nadja and Nona, 33;T. B. Harlem, 40;Dead Father, 46;The Last Illness (a mãe), 53;Georgie Arce, 55;Randall in Extremis ( um guarda do MET), 59;James Hunter (Draffed Negro), 66;Red Grooms and Mimi Gross, 67 1º versão;Warhol, 70;Jack Curtis and Rita Red, 70;47 John Gruen Family ("The Family"), 1970;Duane Hansen, 71-72;John Perreault 72;Irene Paslikas (the Marxist Girl) 72;The Soyer Brothers, 73;Peter Kanuthia, 73.E cinco retratos de John Rothschild, "a longtime personal friend", de 1935 a 1959. https://archive.org/details/aliceneel00neel/page/n7/mode/2up
O catálogo foi um folheto ou brochura de apenas 11 páginas impressas. Mas as duas páginas escritas por Alice Neel e outras duas pela comissária Elke Morger Solomon são importantes: \
"Critics writing about Alice Neel seem more interested in her personality than in her paintings. They speak of her wit, her biting candor and her sharp intelligence, but not as manifested in her work. Yet it is precisely Neel's ability to tell something both of herself and her sitter that distinguishes her as a portraitist within the academic tradition. To a lesser extent than Gertrude Stein, though similarly. Neel's biographies are auto-biographical." (...)"Neel is prejudiced in favor of bohemianism. She's on the side of intellectuals, blacks, women and the poor: her resentment against upper and middle class values is implicit. Her pithy characterizations are almost too direct: she rarely flatters or conventionalizes her subjects. Neel's version of the truth is difficult to confront. Her technique complements her intentions.The immediacy and authenticity of her work derive from the draughtsmanlike quality of her technique.Frequently a deliberate line accents a painterly area to create a tension based on contrasts. The sitters sometimes reflect attitudes current in their contemporary literary and political thinking. Neel is touched by a glance, a beautiful profile, a cunning smile, a notorious personality and through these history is reflected."
ALICE NEEL: "Being born I looked around the world and its people terrified and fascinated me. I was attracted by the morbid and excessive, and everything connected with death had a dark power over me. I was early taken to Sunday school where the tale of Christ nailed to the cross would send me into violent weeping and I'd have to be taken home. Also I remember a film they showed at the church of the horrors of delirium tremens that quite unnerved me and prevented my sleeping for many nights.1 decided to paint a human comedy - such as Balzac had done in literature. In the 30's | painted the beat of those days - Joe Gould, Sam Putman, Ken Fearing, etc. I have painted "El Barrio" in Puerto Rican Harlem. I painted the neurotic, the mad and the miserable. Also I painted the others, including some squares. I once, many light years ago, married a Cuban and lived in Havana where I had my first show. Then all that dissolved and in the 30's I was on the W.P.A. turning in a painting every six weeks. I had a show at the Pinacotheca Gallery during the war and later two shows at the A.C.A. Gallery. I never knew how to push myself and still don't know how. Like Chichikov <Chekov> | am a collector of souls. Now some of my subjects are beginning to die and they have an historic nostalgia: everyone somehow seems better and more important when they are dead. If I could I would make the world happy: the wretched faces in the subway sad and full of troubles worry me. I also hate the conformity of today - everything put into its box.When I go to a show of modern work I feel that my world has been swept away - and yet I do not think it can be so that the human creature will be forever verboten. Thou shalt make no graven images <You shall not make a carved image - Exodus 20:4>. ...."
