Summary:

This painting depicts what in some respects mimics an anatomy amphitheater, but the title, "Arena," tells us that what is going on here is more spectacle than instruction. Painted in 1992, early in the AIDS epidemic, when rapid decline and death from the disease was almost unavoidable, this complex artwork catalogs some of what was taking place in society at the time. A shaft of window light illuminates the center where a masked doctor is examining a Caucasian patient while a nurse, similarly masked, stands nearby. A large white plume of smoke or steam is emanating from the patient's head. The examination is being filmed and narrated.
 
In the lower right-hand corner a dark skinned patient attached to an IV is lying on a gurney. An attendant has his back toward the patient, whom he seems to be ignoring as he speaks with another white clad hospital worker. If one follows a diagonal from the ignored patient through to the central figures, toward the upper left, another patient, covered completely by a sheet and apparently dead, is being wheeled out of the arena. Adjacent to this scene are people seated cross-legged on the floor, listening to a speaker reading from a book while a Buddha floats above him. [According to art critic Klaus Kertess, the reader is poet John Giorno, "who instructed Moore in Buddhist practice" (Toxic Beauty, p. 11)]. In the lower left, a vendor wheels his cart, selling soda and sausages, adding to the carnival atmosphere. Just ahead of him an elderly woman holds a flattened out body in her arms.
 
To the upper right, police barricades and struggling policeman attempt to hold back a group of protesters carrying a sign saying "Who's in Charge?". In the upper center, two skeletons stand in front of a screen and hold banners bearing Latin inscriptions. An instructor is pointing to drawings on the screen - molecules and cell membranes. Other skeletons are positioned at the edges of the painting, also bearing banners, and in the lower center two skeletons stand in front of a fruit tree. One of these skeletons holds what seems to be a heart dripping blood. Several figures dressed in costume are posing or dancing. The curved rows of the arena are sparsely populated and include skeletons of various animals as well as two men who are injecting themselves in the arm. Robotic figures appear here and there in the painting.

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A hospital bed, pale blue sheets and pillows, white snowflakes. Where there might be an individual nestling his head into the pillow, there is instead a small pile of autumn leaves. In the center of one of the leaves, a small metal-like pentagon. Other leaves flutter on the bed and a small bird is perched on the bed railing above the pillow. There is blood issuing from a needle that is lying on the bed and is attached through tubing to an inverted bottle containing blood labeled "Irradiated" and "Moore, 1997." The juxtaposition of pastel colors and snowflakes with the leaking blood is striking.

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Large blue circular eyes stare up from this frontal self-portrait. The sclera is visible underneath the eyes, which reflect the same washed blue of the background. This blue is as startling as, and reminiscent of, the green background of a Van Gogh self-portrait. The visage is grimly determined and the mouth a thin-lipped line. Ears are large and the shoulders blend into the background. He is thin and somewhat haggard.

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Painted while Neel was enrolled in the Works Progress Administration--a New Deal program to help the unemployed-- the work depicts a scene with which the artist was probably familiar, being herself impoverished at the time. The setting is a room at The Russell Sage Foundation, established by Margaret Olivia Sage in 1907 for "'the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States.' In its early years the Foundation undertook major projects in low-income housing, urban planning, social work, and labor reform" (quote from http://www.russellsage.org/about) .

At the painting's rear center sits an elderly (gray haired) woman facing sideways, dressed all in black, head buried in her hands. From her clothing and affect, she is probably a widow. She is seated in front of a small table around which, in a semicircle, sit her interrogators - nine men and two women. They all face her. One of the women seems to be interviewing her while the other people listen with varying expressions on their faces, ranging from thoughtful to impassive. The men are all wearing suits and ties except for one (possibly two), with clerical collar. The women, including the elderly lady under investigation, all wear hats. All are white, with the possible exception of a clergyman, who may be a light skinned black. To the right foreground of the painting sit two men, facing sideways, who appear to be waiting to be questioned. The man closest to the viewer is elderly, with a white mustache, apparently Latino since his skin color is light brown; he is wearing a suit and tie and holds two bananas in his hand. The expression on his face is one of worry and fatigue. To the left foreground, with his back to the viewer, a man sits leaning forward, apparently one of the questioners.

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This portrait of the artist's mother was done a few months before her death in 1954. An elderly woman with white, feathery, unkempt hair sits facing the viewer, wearing a plaid wool bath robe. Although the chair is set on a slight diagonal with the picture plane, the impression is one of frontality: the subject faces (confronts) the viewer with a combination of fortitude and vulnerability.

Neel has suggested spiritual and emotional conflict by dividing the face and accentuating the frightened eyes behind large spectacles. The strong geometrical pattern of the bathrobe gives a sense of stability to the form, while simultaneously setting up a contrast with the delicate hands and aged face of the sick woman.

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In 1980, four years before her death at age 84, Alice Neel painted her first self-portrait. Grasping her paintbrush, the naked artist looks directly at the viewer without concern for pleasing. Bravely, she invites us to meet her fully in this deeply honest and vulnerable space.

The hard vertical bars of the chair encircle her soft and abundant flesh. One arm is raised in readiness for work, the other hangs limp, mimicking the heavy droop of her breasts and stomach. Eyeglasses hint at frailty yet proclaim her as one who sees. These opposing elements mark her singularity.

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An empty, old, red chair sits at a three-quarter view. One leg is cut off by the painting's frame. The chair is the only subject visible in the foreground, suggesting that the room it occupies is empty. In the composition's center is a window with a stark black blind pulled nearly halfway down. The view outside the room reveals two windows in a building across the way. These windows are stacked vertically, one on top of the other, and are nearly identical in appearance.

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A nurse clothed in white and holding a baby stands in the center of a hospital ward. Surrounding her sit adults colored brown and grey. Naked babies lie mostly unattended on white beds. Most of the newborns share the same posture--their arms are splayed and their legs are raised towards the ceiling. A handful of adults in the room attend to the children. Their blurred faces and pallid coloring assign them a baleful monstrousness.

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Professor Samuel D. Gross of Jefferson Medical College is demonstrating an operation for osteomyelitis of the femur in the surgical amphitheater in 1875 in this highly dramatic, powerful scene. Light glints off his forehead, and his visage is stern, calm, and surrounded by a halo of gray-white hair. The bloody fingers of his right hand hold a blood-tipped scalpel. He appears to have just made an incision and is turning away to demonstrate his work.

To the surgeon’s left is the patient, lying in right lateral decubitus position, with exposed leg and buttocks. Assistants are retracting the wound, further dissecting within it, and holding the patient’s legs. Blood is on their hands, instruments, and the patient’s leg. The patient’s face is obscured by the chloroform soaked towel that the anesthetist is using to administer general anesthesia. The white of this towel and the operating table’s sheet are the only other bright white values besides the surgeon’s head in this mostly dark painting.

Adding to the drama is the stricken pose of the patient’s female relative--to the surgeon’s right. For charity cases, a family member was required to be present during the surgery. She averts her head and raises her hands, clenched in a claw-like fashion, to block her view.

In the gallery are variously interested and disinterested observers--mostly medical students--in casual poses and dimly seen. The exception is the artist’s self-portrayal--he is studiously drawing in the front row. Dr. Gross’s son (also a surgeon) is standing in the entry tunnel.

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Summary:

A number of expressionless faces blindfolded, bandaged, many eyeless, some with hats of the 1930s, glasses, masks, bullet-ridden helmets, comprise three fourths of the canvas.  Anything but a group portrait, these totally disconnected faces staring straight ahead are all on different planes. None are connecting with another. Remnants of crematorium smoke stacks and a burned city are the only visible detail in the upper fourth of the canvas, from which a series of tired male refugees, painted in a much smaller scale, appear to be walking down into the portrait.

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