Tag Archives: ICA Boston

ALICE NEEL — VIRTUAL SCREENING

In her beautiful, hard, and certain essay, “The Love of God and Affliction,” the religious philosopher Simone Weil said: “The great enigma of human life is not suffering but affliction. It is not surprising that the innocent are killed, tortured, driven from their country, made destitute or reduced to slavery, imprisoned in camps or cells, since there are criminals to perform such actions.” I am certain that Alice Neel, more than many an American artist, had a deep understanding of affliction. She did not use her work to escape it, but rather to plunge further into it—into the trauma of being despised, or forsaken. Indeed, if she had any credo as an artist, it was to show us ourselves, and herself, even when (or especially when) it was dangerous and hard to do so. Hilton Als*

ICA Boston presents the singular documentary ALICE NEEL—directed by her grandson Andrew. See link below for streaming information.

ALICE NEEL

Directed by Andrew Neel.

ICA Boston

Through April 1.

*Hilton Als, “Carmen and Judy, 1972,” in Alice Neel, Uptown (New York: David Zwirner Books: London: Victoria Miro, 2017), 111.

Andrew Neel, Alice Neel (2007), from top: Alice Neel; Neel with her sons Richard (left) and Hartley. Images courtesy and © the filmmaker and SeeThink Productions.

JOHN AKOMFRAH — PURPLE

John Akomfrah—whose three-chanel video installation about Stuart Hall, The Unfinished Conversation, created a sensation at MOMA in 2017—presents PURPLE, a new six-channel work on climate change.

“Symphonic in scale and divided into five interwoven movements, the film features various disappearing ecological landscapes, from the hinterlands of Alaska and the desolate environments of Greenland to the Tahitian Peninsula and the volcanic Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific…

PURPLE conveys the complex and fragile interrelation of human and non-human life with a sense of poetic gravity that registers the vulnerability of living in precarious environments.”*

JOHN AKOMFRAH—PURPLE*

Through September 2.

Institute of Contemporary Art

25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston.

John Akomfrah, Purple, 2018, stills and installation view. Film images courtesy and © the artist, installation image courtesy Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional.