Born January 28, 1900, the painter Alice Neel grew up right along the twentieth century, though she was less a product of her time than a harbinger of times to come. Significant success eluded her until the sixties; a true Aquarian, she was built for that decade of upheaval–and this new century of upheaval, too. Today, her hard gems of truth and beauty illuminate what we most need to see.
Neel first came on my radar as I was rushing through a gallery of contemporary paintings at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, were I screeched to a full stop in front of her 1974 portrait of former museum department head John I. H. Baur. With a palette of slate and ochre and a bold, almost slapdash brushstroke, she’d conveyed him as an institutional hack and a bemused enabler. It was rueful and rich, and though I hurried on, when I saw the Zwirner gallery was hosting a show of her work, I hurried right there as well.
These paintings of her family, neighbors, friends, lovers, and political comrades in Spanish Harlem and the Upper West Side are not perfect. In some cases, they could ask more, tell more. 
But they resonate as few twentieth-century portraits do because they are so vibrant and cock-sure – so defiantly gripping.
Hilton Als reviews theater, not fine arts, for The New Yorker. Yet he curated this Zwirner exhibition, perhaps because Neel’s intensely democratic curiosity mirrors his own. (His Neel book will be released this June.) In a catalog essay, he shares what this child of West Indian immigrants, raised in deep Brooklyn to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, initially recognized in her work Continue Reading →
Anne Lamott may be one of the most high-profile progressive Christians in America today, but she’s better known as the author of such bestselling books of fiction and nonfiction as Imperfect Birds and Some Assembly Required, not to mention the beloved writing guide Bird by Bird. This may change with her newest book, Hallelujah Anyway. Though all her essay collections have centered on themes of faith and compassion, this one is her most explicitly Christian. In it, she wrangles with biblical stories, and not just the ones that make everyone comfortable. Ruth, Mary, Martha, Jesus, and controversial Paul dance through this book about mercy and self-reckoning. It’s wonderful, and not just because her combination of leftist politics and Christian beliefs bridges a looming gap in our country.
It has been said that the health of a democracy can be gauged by the integrity of its voting system. By this measurement, the United States may have terminal cancer. But there’s another, equally meaningful measure of a democracy’s health: freedom of press. Scratch that: integrity of press. In this regard, the biopsy results of our increasingly fraught country are merely inconclusive. It is true that the press helped elect President Trump, if “elect” is the right word. But it also is true that, as of this writing, the press, along with the U.S. courts, are all that stands between the American people and a complete dictatorship.