ALICE NEEL (1900-1984)

“When Alice and Carlos moved to New York in 1927, she found a job in a Greenwich Village bookstore run by Fanya Foss, a woman with literary aspirations. In [a watercolor called The Intellectual], Foss, at right, affects a mannered, Pre-Raphaelite pose in an overstuffed chair. At the far left, in contrast to Foss's contemplative calm, sits a three-armed and three-legged Alice trying desperately to participate in the discussion while struggling to keep an energetic toddler in check. Rarely has the hopelessness of maintaining any kind of intellectual life while single-handedly caring for an infant been so vividly imaged. Neel effects her revenge–a kind of female deballing–on her friend for the creative leisure time she enjoys by opening her dress to reveal, not voluptuous breasts, but sagging teats. Her real revenge, of course, is the watercolor itself, which serves as a material rebuke to Foss's arid dreaming.”
—P. Allara, Pictures of People: Alice Neel's American Portrait Gallery, Hanover, 1998, p. 44.