Hasta La Ideas

A couple of weeks ago, when relaying news that Hauser & Wirth will open a New York City gallery in September, we mentioned the splendid Alice Neel exhibition—”Nudes of the 1930s“—on view at Zwirner & Wirth through next Saturday (a concurrent show of Neel’s paintings is up at David Zwirner). Now Jason Boog, editor of our bookish brother blog, Galleycat, has whipped up a video that illuminates Neel’s involvement with the Works Progress Administration (her pay: approximately $90.00 per month) while spotlighting the early paintings, watercolors, and drawings in the Zwirner & Wirth exhibition. Click on the below video for a memorable opening that features a vintage newsreel about the WPA. Over footage of a concert tucked inside a Mission Revival bandshell, the announcer reminds us (in a swell rat-a-tat cadence!) that “the sensitive fingers of artists are poorly suited to manual labor.”

Note: All three images in the above video are copyright The Estate of Alice Neel and come courtesy of David Zwirner, New York.