Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
José Asleep
Alice Neel American
Not on view
Neel reserved many of her most intimate and uncensored thoughts for the medium of paper, as seen in the works Alice and José (1938), Untitled (Alice and José) (ca.1935) and José Asleep (1938), all of which depict the artist’s partner José Santiago Negrón, a Puerto Rican musician with whom she had her first son, Richard. Each one lavishes attention on José’s sensuality and celebrates without shame or self-consciousness the couple’s relationship. As feminists of the 1970s recognized, Neel was one of the earliest women artists to claim the genre of erotic art, long monopolized by men, for herself. She did so, moreover, at a moment when female sexuality and sexual relations in general were carefully policed by society.
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
