On The Mental State Embodied In Alice Neal’s Portrait

Alice Neal is a famous American portrait painter.She has experienced the ups and downs of many art schools and artistic phenomena such as American Abstract Expressionism and pop ism,but her works are always independent of the American art trend and maintain her own unique language.In the context of China,scholars mostly pay attention to the style and appearance in Alice Neal’s works,but do not involve too much about her experience and psychological state.However,after careful study of his life experience,we will find that the formation of his style largely comes from his unstable psychological state,especially in his early painting creation.Therefore,the author makes a detailed analysis of his early portrait creation.I hope to reveal the internal relationship between the artist’s creative practice and his personal psychological state.Firstly,it combs the context of Alice wich village’s early portrait creation and the collapse of Greenwich Village’s spirit after graduation.Based on this,the author roughly classifies the themes of these portraits.The author summarizes a large number of themes into: mother and child portraits,portraits of people of color and nude portraits.Using the method of psychoanalysis to analyze the paintings on these themes,the author finds that Neil’ s early portraits are mainly divided into two unconscious manifestations:one is trauma,which is related to the death of Neil’s child and the second child’s departure from Cuba.These events have had a great impact on Neil’s mental state,These experiences also enter the unconscious level in the form of potential memory.The other is depression,which hides Neil’s unconscious instincts and desires,but art,as the same mechanism as dreams,will release his instincts and desires.Therefore,in his early portraits,the relief of depression is mainly reflected in two themes,one is the theme of colored people,and the other is the theme of nudity.The former is to relieve the restraint of the white elite’s etiquette and behavior,and reflect its natural state of ID.The latter takes Joe Gould as a typical case to show the unconscious sexual desire of ID.Therefore,this paper can prove that Neil’s psychological state has a profound impact on his early portrait creation.