Press for "Discos and Dancers" at Picture Theory
Clare Gemima for White Hot Magazine
an excerpt from Gemima’s interview with George McNeil’s daughter, Helen:
Clare Gemima: It would be amazing to hear your thoughts on Occasion, one of George’s incredibly golden, rather erotic oil works made in 1966 - a painting that’s hands-down the exhibitions’ main show-stopper. It's interesting that you talk about how it isn't a flat painting, yet there's an interdynamic between flat layers. The more we speak, the more I look at it, it feels almost similar to paleolithic cave painting.
Helen McNeil: Hans Prinzhorn’s (1886 – 1933) exhibitions and writings about schizophrenic and ‘patient art’ were known to George through the Surrealists. My take is that George was aware of the role of the ‘irrational’ in art and believed that ‘sophisticated art’ or art that comes out of an expressionist or French tradition is not that far removed. He considered that cave painting and what was then called “primitive art” had an almost shamanic power. It’s funny that Occasion comes close to being an obscene painting. George made the lower part of the figure's body to be a ‘swoop’ rather than buttocks – she’s about to leap upwards.. The figure is not a model designed to please the male gaze. I mean she could, but she's no odalisque, or a model aware of being looked at. Several of his later paintings from 1983 onward deal with voyeurism though. There are figures or faces looking at each other – almost always a man looking at a woman. When his figures were depicted relatively relaxed he would call them bathers. When his figures were more energetic and alive, he would call them dancers.
Read more here: https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/george-mcneil-s-daughter-/6377
George McNeil
Katie Cercone for Art 511 Magazine
…Discos and Dancers carefully curated selection of work on display seems to distinguish the artist from the vacuum of abstraction and perhaps, fuses a connecting link with today’s youth culture and nightlife. In their day, these paintings ushered in a bit of a career renaissance for McNeil, with critics situating his stirring new body of work within the auspices of German Expressionism, COBRA, art brut, neo-expressionism and graffiti. During the recent opening in Chelsea, the space was activated by a live performance by the Gibney Dance Company. “As George McNeil gets older, his work gets younger,” observed critic Michael Brenson upon seeing the 80-year-old artist’s latest work.
Full article: http://art511mag.com/2024/05/09/discos-and-dancers-pulse-of-the-next-generation/
Mario Naves for The Sun
…McNeil’s peers held the work in high esteem — de Kooning was a fan — and scratched their collective head at his lack of notoriety.
McNeil’s art found an audience in the mid-1980s. His late canvases — rambunctious meldings of AbEx facture and ADVERTISEMENT graffiti-influenced pictograms — benefited from a renewed interest in both Expressionism and figurative painting. Given the buoyant and often uproarious nature of the compositions, not a few observers thought McNeil had finally achieved maturity at the ripe old age of 70-something.