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Tina Modotti BY MARGARET HooKs Reviewed by Robin Rice For permission to photocopy for internal use within your organization, or to make copies for external or academic use please contact the 62 Between Union and Liberation: Women Artists in South Africa 1910-1994 Copyright Clearance Center at 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA EDITED BY MARl ON AR NO LD AND BR ENDA SCHMA HM ANN 01923, USA; telephone: +1 978-750-8400 or online at http: / /www.copy Reviewed by Elizabeth Rankin right.com / . Any unauthorized reproduction, transmission, or storage may result 65 Dialogues: Women Artists From Ireland in civil or criminal liability. BY KATY D EEPWELL Reviewed by Patricia Briggs ALICE NEEL AND M E By Mary D. Ga rrard n the winter of 1977, Ali ce Nee! painted me (front cover). with what I had become, I simply could not imagine a portrait When I came to her apartment and studio on West 107th that would not falsify at least half my identity. I Street in New York, I walked in the door, fresh from the cold, The portrait project was cold on the back burner until I met snowy street, and before I could take off my coat and hat, she Alice. Here was an artist who had for decades been painting said, "Stop, I want to paint you just like that." But I was not one portraits that were both realist and modernist. "Do you take o f N eel's chosen victims-the p ortrait cam e ab o ut as a commissions?" I asked . "Oh, yes," she said, and named a price, convergence of two factors. which was modest enough for me to propose to the patron, In 1977, I was just ending my term as the second president Lucile Clark Garrard . My poor mother didn' t know what she of Women's Cau cus for Art (WCA), the nati onal organiza ti on was in for, but she trusted me, and the project was set. of wom en in the visual arts.' In a photograph of an early When she first saw the portrait, my mother hated it. For a conference meeting I am accompanied by WCA officers Dian e long time, Norma was the only one who liked it, recognizing Russell, Claire Sh erman, Ellouise Sch oettler and orm a in it what she calls my intensity and centeredness. In her book Broude. At that time, I knew orma only as another WCA on Ali ce eel, Pamela Allara labeled this image "the militant lead er wh o h ad recently joined m y univers ity's art feminist activist, " and perhaps that's what my mother saw in it department. We began our life together as collaborators and too. I think in time she would have come to understand it, partners soon after the Neel portrait was painted. In the larger because she would surely have been a feminist if she'd known theater of fe minist acti vism, orma and I had come to know a how. Indeed, the very idea of her requesting my portrait might lot of artists and other fe minists who would become nati onally be counted a feminist gesture because, I realized much later, prominent. One of the m was Alice N ee! (1900-84), newly she might have wanted to offset my father's board-room style famous but grandly so. Two years later, she would be honored portrait hanging in their living room. But as it happened, my at President Jimmy Carter's White House, along with Louise mother would become ill and die within a year, at a moment Nevelson (1899-1988), Selma Burke (1900-95), Isabel Bishop when she was as troubled about what I was doing with my life (1902-88), Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911 ), and Georgia O'Keeffe as about the portrai t. (1887-1986), in the WCA's first annual awards ceremony. The As photogra phs of the 1970s dem on stra te, s uch as one White House event was instigated by Ellouise Schoettler and showing Lucy Lippard picketing at the Whitney, I didn't look Norma Broude, and ca rried out by Judy Brodsky, my successor different from others in my world. Alice Nee! saw me in the as WCA president, and Washington artist Charlotte Robinson. uniform of the day, and, ever alert to the fit and misfit between I first met Nee! at a party at Charlotte Robinson's house in individuals and types, said, "I want to paint you like that. " Falls Church, Virginia. As I sat talking to her, a wicked thought Nan cy Nee!, her daughter-in-law and studio assistant, took me came into my head-and this is the second factor. For years, aside and whispered, "You don' t have to wear the coat and hat, my m o ther h ad wanted to h ave my portrait p ainted . She you know. Since this is a commission, you can have it however would pay for it, she said, but would leave it to me to find a you want." The art historia n in me took only an instant to suitable arti st. For years, I had demurred, protesting that no respond: "I want her to do her own idea. I want an Alice Nee!." good modern artists painted portraits-wouldn' t she be just as Wha tever tha t turned out to be, a t least it would set the happy w ith a nice photograph? I had resisted even the nice debutante to rest.