Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Addiction
Alice Neel American
Not on view
Addiction is Neel’s most abstract work of art. Its swirling, looping forms suggest an altered state of mind, as does its title, which hints, much like the distorted human figure therein, at psychic and physical turmoil. Addiction was painted in the year Neel spent almost entirely in psychiatric hospitals near Philadelphia. Whether she intended it as a picture of her own state of mind is unknown, however. Either way, this delicate watercolor establishes the importance she placed on form, color, and space as elements that communicate meaning in and of themselves, independent of biographical or representational content.
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