Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty

Hoban's (Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art) latest biography is a sweeping portrait of a colorful subject, the painter Alice Neel. It is also an effective cultural history of the artistic and political scene in 20th-century New York. This well-documented work brings to life a "collector of souls" whose passion for painting the human figure at a time when abstraction was the rage resulted in years of financial hardship and obscurity. Neel emerges as a resolute survivor who lived by her convictions, both aesthetically and politically. A single mother committed to a bohemian lifestyle, Neel was also a supporter of political movements that ranged from Communism to feminism. While this biography suffers at times from overly detailed accounts of the supporting players in Neel's life and from the author's occasional repetition, it is immensely absorbing, and soars at the end as Neel, in the later decades of her life, finally receives "the recognition she so long deserved." Photos. (Dec.)