Michel Auder: A Portrait of Alice Neel

About

The two became friends in ­­­­1975 when Neel (1900-1984) was living on the Upper West Side, just south of Harlem. As Auder recalled in an interview with Art in America, "I met her when she was 75 years old, just socially. She was sitting in a chair at a party, and going "Oh, you have such a long nose ... And that chin, like a Roman emperor!" She would do that to everyone." A close relationship developed between Neel and her portraitist, who would visit her often. Drawing on extensive footage he shot of Neel over the course of their five year friendship—at home, while painting, on vacation, and in public—Auder's film is a revelatory and tender document of the artist's life.

Born in France in 1945, Auder bought his first portable video camera in 1969. Moving to New York City the same year, he became immersed in the downtown art scene, and was a pioneer of early video art influenced by Warhol's screen tests and French New Wave directors such as Jean-Luc Godard. The analogue vignettes with which Auder captures Neel are typical of some his works, which are characterized by a chronicling of daily life with low-quality cameras in a raw and experimental style. Following its initial release in 1986, a longer version of the film was produced in 1999 with funding from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.