Alice Neel’s granddaughter Elizabeth Neel talks about painting

Masking tape and spray paint figure prominently in Elizabeth Neel’s new abstract paintings, on view at Sikkema Jenkins through May 22. Formerly represented by Deitch where she had a solo in 2008, Neel discusses abstraction, subject matter,  and learning to paint with her grandmother in a recent conversation with filmmaker and family friend Michael Auder at Interview.

MICHEL AUDER: You�ve been painting since �95 or something like that, right?

NEEL: Well, I started fooling around with it when I was little, with Alice. That was the beginning, when she gave me that Winsor & Newton paint box. That was the �big, fancy gift.� Then I stopped for all of high school and college.

AUDER: How old were you when she gave you that gift?

NEEL: She died when I was 9, so I must have been 7 or 8 . . . something like that. It�s really hard to use oil paints, actually. I would sit next to her when she would set up her things, and I�d set up mine, too.

AUDER: Do you still have some of those early paintings?

NEEL: Yes. I�m sure Mom and Dad do. Everything�s always piled up under something.

AUDER: Right.

NEEL: But I didn�t think of being an artist until after I went away to boarding school. There were other things to be interested in. And it seemed like a nightmare. I mean, look at Alice�s life. From the outside, from a child�s perspective . . . Dad used to joke about artists eating dog food for dinner and stuff.

AUDER: So the information you collected as a child about your dad�s mother, it was a certain hard kind of life?

NEEL: Yeah, a meaningful life, but one full of suffering, basically. Not that I didn�t try dog food. I was eating Milk-Bones, but I did that just because I was weird, you know? [laughs]

AUDER: Dog food by choice. [laughs] Weren�t you going to be a lawyer?

NEEL: That came as the moment of truth. I had studied history at Brown and didn�t feel like doing anything with it. What does one do with a history degree besides become a historian? And the professors in school, it seemed like they were just writing books for other professors to comment on, and vice versa�it was the most self-referential, boring world you could ever imagine. Out of concern, my parents thought I should go to law school. �You�re analytical. You�re articulate.� I thought, Why not? I studied for my LSATs and got into the room to take the test. I looked around and was like, �Fuck this. There�s just no way.� Instead I told my parents about this little school in Boston known as The Museum School that basically had no requirements. I said I was going to go there for a summer program. Of course, my parents were very generous to even consider the idea, but Dad really couldn�t say no because his entire cultural existence had been about the art world….

Elizabeth Neel, new green, 2013, oil and spray paint on canvas, 76 x 96 inches.

AUDER: Did you always do painting, or did you ever try another medium?

NEEL:
Actually I stopped and made videos and digital photographs for a while.
I was getting frustrated with painting because everyone was making
paintings from opaque projections, like Luc Tuymans and Gerhard Richter.
When those guys do it, it�s great. When art students do it, it isn�t
so. It was a real fad. I figured I�d make work related to source
material that I was interested in�images I found on the Internet. But
then I realized that the transcription from photograph to wall had to be
filled in by me. Otherwise, the piece becomes a second-rate version of
the original source. Like, you love a thing and take a picture of it,
but it may not hold any of the qualities of that original thing you
loved. It�s like when you see a sunset outside, you say, �Holy shit,�
and take a picture of it with your camera. There�s none of the feeling
left….That�s where the painting comes into play. Painting was the way I
could resist turning something into a second-rate version….

Elizabeth Neel, installation view of paintings and sculpture.

AUDER:
When I look around your studio and see all of the tools and jars, it�s a
very classical painting studio. But you get a real kick out of
painting, don�t you?

NEEL: Well, it�s hard to do. Not
just with the weight of art history and contemporary discourse. But it�s
actually technically very difficult to achieve. I guess growing up
around my grandmother�Alice�s way of applying paint in this fresh
manner, but having these oscillating moments of incredible virtuosic
realism�was totally inspiring. Because it was free and easy, but
incredibly complex all at the same time. To me, the way she painted
always seemed connected to living, more than just an exercise…. READ more.

“Elizabeth Neel: 3 and 4 before 2 and 5,” a solo show of  painting and sculpture, Sikkima Jenkins, Chelsea, New York, NY. Through May 22, 2013.

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