At the age of 80 in 1980, Alice Neel painted her first self-portrait. According to the blurb at the new Barbican exhibition, the painting (above) took her five years to complete – and her cheeks are flushed because ‘ it was so damned hard.’ Of the self-portrait the artist said, ‘ All my life I wanted to do a nude self-portrait but I put it off until now – when people would accuse me of insanity rather than vanity.’

With her figurative portraits of fellow New Yorkers, often those marginalised by society, from her Black and Puerto Rican neighbours in Harlem to civil rights activists, poets, artists and queer performers; Neel (1900-1984) captured the zeitgeist. She famously persuaded Andy Warhol to sit semi-naked in a surgical truss after he’d been shot by Valerie Solanas. Her distinctive artwork ‘ just told it like it was’.

How brilliant that she persevered with her self-portrait for half a decade to show the world what an ageing body looks like.

Describing herself as a collector of souls, the late feminist artist captured clothes really well, too. The Alice Neel: Hot Off The Griddle exhibition is on until Sunday 23 May, 2023. And while you’re in the area, the Whitechapel Gallery’s Action, Gesture, Paint is well worth a look. This is a global take on women abstract expressionist painters from the 20th century; including lots of names I was unfamiliar with but all as equally talented as their much-lauded male contemporaries.

There’s a review of both exhibitions by Laura Cummings in the Observer HERE.