Word: addison
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Portraitist Alice Neel has said that "Art is not as stupid as human conversation," and, in the case of her paintings, she is right. The paintings now on display at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Mass. give visitors a more direct line of communication to Neel than speech can provide. The show is a sort of limited retrospective of the painter's work and a centennial celebration of her birth on Jan. 28, 1900. The Addison is the third host to the exhibit, put together by the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Ann Temkin...
...often stripped literally and figuratively, down to their bare skin and most essential character. It is this ability of Neel's to completely reveal her subjects which makes her work stunning. Appropriately, her "Self-Portrait" (1980) awaits visitors at the entrance to the show, on the landing of the Addison's second floor. An 80-year-old Neel sits naked except for a pair of glasses and a paintbrush. It's an unabashed image of an old woman; no attempt is made to disguise the pendulous breasts and sagging face...
...Addison show clearly chronicles Neel's evolution from a recent art-school grad (she attended the Philadelphia School of Design for Women), dealing with her rejection of academic training, to a confident, comfortable portraitist. Her earlier work is somewhat primitive in its calculated naivet. The tones are earthy and dark, and the way she renders her sitters varies. Some portraits give an impression of purposeful awkwardness, while others are just somehow off. Walking through the show, the figures become more colorful-blacks become blues, browns, yellows; purples appear-and the backgrounds behind them become simpler. The show does not skip...
Alice Neel is on view at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass., through Dec. 31. For more information, call...
Think of John Kennedy, who learned from his father the art of reckless behavior concealed by compartmentalization and sleight-of-hand. In the summer of 1947, JFK, visiting England and Ireland, had an onset of Addison's disease (an insufficiency of the adrenal glands) so serious that it nearly killed him. He was given the last rites and shipped back to America with a nurse. Ever after, he lied about his Addison's disease, which he disguised as a touch of malaria picked up in the Pacific during the war. He would never have been elected President if the truth...