Day 8 / Last Sickness

Jan 5

Jan 5 Day 8 / Last Sickness

I do not pose my sitters. I do not deliberate and then concoct. . . . Before painting, when I talk to the person, they unconsciously assume their most characteristic pose, which in a way involves all their character and social standing – what the world has done to them and their retaliation.

—Alice Neel

Last Sickness is one of four portraits that Alice Neel painted of her ill mother, Alice Hartley Neel, while they lived together in New York. She completed it a few months before her mother passed away in 1954. A tender mother-daughter dynamic is captured as Neel lovingly—if awkwardly—documents their relationship. Her mother’s expression is disarming, with raised eyebrows, off-kilter eyes, and crooked glasses hinting at her reluctance and amusement with being painted. The vibrant citrus in the background contrasts with the sitter’s discolored cheeks, wispy white hair, translucent veins, and arthritic joints.

Neel is both sensitive to and frank about her mother’s condition; she does not impose judgment or affectation. Rather, she invites the viewer to see her mother with dignity, to remember her, and to confront old age head on. With an unwavering commitment to capturing the full breadth of life in her portraits, Neel’s work offers a penetrating yet tender gaze into the human condition.

reflections

How can looking to the arts, with its portrayals of human relationships and means of representing people through the highs and lows of lived experience, comfort us in challenging times?
Can we apply Neel’s approach of seeking beauty and of documenting and recording memory to our own lives?
How does Last Sickness teach us to look at life as it is, even when it is difficult?
In the same way that Neel memorializes her mother, how would you like to be represented and remembered by those closest to you?