AN ART BOOK, basically, with fifty-some full-page color reproductions of paintings by Alice Neel, who lived in Harlem in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s and mainly painted her neighbors there, a few of whom were famous (Harold Cruse, Alice Childress, Faith Ringgold) but were mostly not.
The paintings are remarkable, walking a line between European expressionism and social documentation, but I likely would not have tracked this down were it not for Als's contributions, a short introduction and texts for a dozen of the paintings. It was worth the tracking down. Als's criticism is at its most interesting when it is most autobiographical (see White Girls) and Als's introduction to this book suggests why:
I believe that one reason I began writing essays--a form without a form until you make it--was this: you didn't have to borrow from an emotionally and visually upsetting past, as one did in fiction, apparently, to write your story. In an essay, your story could include your actual story and even more stories; you could collapse time and chronology and introduce other stories. In short, the essay is not about the empirical "I" but about the collective--all the voices that made your "I." When I first saw Alice Neel's pictures, I. think I recognized a similar ethos of inclusion in her work.
Als's most fascinating criticism (I think) fascinates because he tells us his story in telling us about the art that engages him. That he himself grew up in Harlem and as a child might have walked by adults who had been the children in these paintings gives the book its spine.
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