"Alice Neel believed there was some sort of individual reality she could discover and portray in her works. One of the aspects of social criticism that is very common in the 20th century is that “we are what people think we are” because we have created an environment in which the projection of the views of others upon ourselves are so formative in the ways in which we are perceived, and the way in which we want to be perceived, that that which we call a mask, which is the persona that we have adopted, may be all that we have. Portraiture is a way in [Neel's] hands not only of extricating individuals from the mass but also focusing, concentrating, attention on those individuals as such. And in that sense it’s heroic."
-- Richard Brilliant, Art Historian
A selection of some boundless individuals...
