There's hardly a false note anywhere, and the portraits of Hugh Hurd, Lester Cole and Mary Beebe, as well as the 1980 still life Light, depicting a vase on a small table engaged in an intimate, psychosexual dance with its shadow, are all particularly strong, but the real knockouts are Neel's portraits of family members: her son Richard, 1969; her son Hartley, 1978; and Richard's first wife, Nancy, in
a wonky chaise longue, 1980.
«Alice Neel: Late Portraits & Still Lifes,» at David Zwirner Gallery, is a rare and extraordinary grouping of 16 perfect, irreducible human beings, four bouquets of flowers, a couple of dying plants on a windowsill beside a fire escape and a
wonky white
chaise longue, in a total of 18 paintings dating from 1964 to 1983, the year before the artist's death.