If you can't make it to the Alice Neel retrospective currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, L.A. Louver offers an impressive consolation prize in a show featuring 16 paintings of Neel's friends, lovers, associates and acquaintances spanning four decades — a minisurvey of the artist's oeuvre. Upon entering L.A. Louver's downstairs gallery, turn left and immediately head for the smaller side room. Here, in a selection of four portraits from the '40s and '50s, you find Neel (1900-1984) finding herself in her 40s and 50s. Having studied at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art) before settling in Greenwich Village, and having endured more loves, losses and personal turmoils than most would hope to endure in young adulthood, Neel had moved into middle age, and moved to Spanish Harlem, looking to carve out a place for figurative painting as abstract expressionism was dawning. Nestled among these earlier works, you can see Neel working through proto-modern and early modernist painting. In a 1940 portrait, the face of Neel's companion Sam Brody seems infused with hints of Picasso, the lines of both Mexican and WPA murals, and also art deco, and the head is surrounded by an aura of blue sky, while below the shoulders, the painting goes dour... More >>>