Abstract
The aged body tends to be represented only rarely in Western art, and in those instances usually as a grotesque image intended to instil fear or as a memento mori. But the self-portrait that Alice Neel painted in 1980 when she was 80 years old does not operate in terms of such conventions. Rather, as Pamela Allara suggests, it is simply a frank and unapologetic representation by the artist of herself in the very chair where she often posed sitters in her living room, but in this instance wielding the brush and thus in the position of the artist as well as model. Neel's portrait is ultimately one, Allara argues, that serves as a challenge to the viewer to provide recognition, even admiration, for the aging female and which, furthermore, brings us into confrontation with our embodied selves.
