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Christopher Lazare
Alice Neel American
Not on view
Neel’s portrayal of Christopher Lazare (1912–1988), whom she playfully called the "queen of the homosexuals," presents the author and editor three times across the page, with a fourth portrait pasted in the lower right corner as a collaged element. Along the composition’s left side, he appears as he might in public, a modern dandy sporting a fashionable driving cap and Breton shirt, which the painter rendered with direct blue lines. Elsewhere, the author wears a robe (or scarf) that reveals his rash-covered chest, an early manifestation of Neel’s empathetic interest in bodily distress. At center, Lazare, turned in profile, folds in on himself while a phallus sprouts surreally out of his head, an unambiguous pun that invokes his gay identity and desire: he literally has sex on his mind.
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