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Quote by Alice Neel

“The minute I sat in front of a canvas I was happy. Because it was a world, and I could do what I liked in it.”

Quote by Alice Neel

Book:Alice Neel: women

Work

Alice Neel: women

This book showcases Alice Neel's celebrated paintings of women, capturing their diverse experiences and personalities through her distinctive style. more

Author

Alice Neel was an American painter and sculptor renowned for her realistic and emotionally charged portraits. Her work primarily focused on the lives of the working class, the poor, and the marginalized, reflecting a profound empathy and social consciousness. Over the course of her five-decade career, Neel produced a vast body of work that has been recognized for its raw honesty and powerful imagery. more

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“I do not pose my sitters. I do not deliberate and then concoct... Before painting, when I talk to the person, they unconsciously assume their most characteristic pose, which in a way involves all their character and social standing - what the world has done to them and their retaliation.”

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“It's a privilege, you know, to paint and it takes up a lot of time and it means there's a lot of things you don't do. But still, with me, painting was more than a profession, it was also an obsession. I had to paint.”

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“Like Chekhov, I am a collector of souls... if I hadn't been an artist, I could have been a psychiatrist.”

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“I thought you had to give up a lot for art, and you did. It required complete concentration. It also required that whatever money you had had to be put into art materials.”

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“Nobody knows what makes good art. As an artist, when it happens, you're grateful, and then you get on with it.”

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“Cezanne said, 'I love to paint people who have grown old naturally in the country.' And I say I love to paint people who have been torn to shreds by the rat race in New York.”

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“You know it's very hard to maintain a theory in the face of life that comes crashing about you.”

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“I know all the theory of everything but when I paint I don't think of anything except the subject and me.”

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“An aged painter cannot help but accept the fact that his work belongs in the past. Younger painters have leaped into the phenomenon called contemporary, where it would be foolish of me to try to enter. But I can claim my own phenomenon.”

Trying I Can Facts Helping Would Be Past My Own Accepting Claims Foolish Contemporary Painter Phenomenon

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