Hilton Als on Diane Arbus and Alice Neel
I couldn\u2019t be more excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most renowned writers, curators, critics, and cultural commentators in the world right now\u2026 Hilton Als! \n\nA Pulitzer prize winner, a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the theatre critic at the New Yorker, where he has been writing since 1994, Als is also the author of numerous books \u2013 from White Girls (a collection of 13 literary essays, exploring race, gender, interpersonal relationships) to more recently, My Pinup, an intimate study on his friendship with Prince. He is a teaching professor at Berkeley, and has held previous posts at Columbia, Yale, and more. \n\nAls has been one of my favourite writers, and curators, on art since I can remember. He writes in a manner that is intimate, with emotion and rigour, infusing it with stories from his upbringing in Crown Heights in Brooklyn to ones with more complex family dynamics. \n\nAnd there is a humanity at the centre of it: whether it's his ability to make us see artists as people \u2013 with their struggles, desires, needs and complexities \u2013 or his belief that we can all be artists too. Often tracing the city of New York through images and words, he unearths stories that were often cast out from mainstream institutions but feel so pertinent for the world today. From Alice Neel to Diane Arbus, whose work and subject he treats with such empathy, not only can he transport us to the exact street where Arbus took that picture, or to Neel\u2019s 108th street apartment, but writes so acutely on the mediums they used. \n\nOn photography vs painting he has said: The former takes life as it comes, in an instant, but can be described as a series of selective moments. Painting, on the other hand, has time on its side, the better to know, delve, and express what it\u2019s like for two people to sit in a room, observing one another while talking or not talking about the world.\n\nAnd it is the latter that I still remember experiencing, being a gallery assistant in my early 20s at Victoria Miro, at the time of one of his many brilliant curated exhibitions \u2013 Alice Neel, Uptown \u2013 when I saw the whole world walk in, recognise themselves and feel seen and celebrated \u2013 which, I think, is the best outcome an exhibition can have\u2026 \n\nIn this episode we discuss the power of language and the importance of sharing it; Hilton's introductions to art; his early days as a photo-editor that informed him as a curator; and his takes on Diane Arbus and Alice Neel. \n\nHILTON'S WRITING + CURATING:\nhttps://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308056/white-girls-by-als-hilton/9780141987293\nhttps://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2022/joan-didion-what-she-means\nhttps://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2019/god-made-my-face-collective-portrait-james-baldwin\nhttps://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/26/alice-neels-portraits-of-difference\nhttps://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2017/alice-neel-uptown-curated-hilton-als\nhttps://www.davidzwirnerbooks.com/product/alice-neel-uptown\n\n--\n\nTHIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:\n\nhttps://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037\n\nENJOY!!!\n\nFollow us:\nKaty Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel\nSound editing by Nada Smiljanic\nMusic by Ben Wetherfield\n\nhttps://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/