Alice Neel

I'm looking forward to "Alice Neel’s Women", which will be opening at the National Museum of Women in the Arts on October 28.

Not just because I am a huge Neel fan, but also because the exhibition features a portrait by Neel of our own Lida Moser.

Neel did four portraits of Lida Moser in her lifetime. I am not sure which one(s) is included in this exhibition. I've been writing and calling the NMWA for the last two years (to find out), and so far they've ignored me.

Lida Moser was one of Alice Neel's closest friends, and I love to hear her stories about how in the 40s, 50s and 60s Neel's work was ignored by the critics and art world because she refused to change her work to "fit" the prevailing abstract styles in vogue during those years.

Lida Moser also recalls how, when Neel began to get recognition in the 1970s, especially after her retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1974, male artists in the NY art scene openly resented her success because she was a woman.

Moser also experienced this same form of resentment (from male photographers) when she was given photographic assignments by Vogue, Look, Life and other such magazines that she worked for.

Today's female artists stand on the shoulders of both these wonderful women.

See work by Lida Moser here and by Alice Neel here.