Cigarette Girl 1980

Curator: LeRoy Neiman's "Cigarette Girl," painted in 1980, confronts us with an interesting commentary on both the seller and the sold. What is your initial reaction to this piece? Editor: The first thing that strikes me is the application of color; the composition is bold and vibrant, even lurid. There's an energy in those strokes, despite the potentially still subject. The colors are applied somewhat arbitrarily aren't they? Curator: Absolutely. The expressiveness overshadows realism. Neiman had this incredible ability to capture the zeitgeist. The piece speaks volumes about the social attitudes and shifting culture around tobacco use in that era. Cigarette girls were becoming relics, objects of nostalgia, while simultaneously tobacco-related illnesses became a very real cultural threat. Editor: The lines are confident, maybe a little crude. See how he captures light? How it bounces across the box held by the subject. Her features are exaggerated, aren’t they? The neon flesh tones seem quite unreal. The stark, dark background pushes the figure forward, further enhancing this feeling of being thrust into an encounter, yes? Curator: I'd argue Neiman wants us to grapple with that directness. There’s this forced, almost uncomfortable interaction presented that mirrors society's ambivalent relationship with products like cigarettes. Were the paintings a kind of Pop Art, responding to mass marketing? It captures a turning point when advertising began to be seen more critically. Editor: Agreed. I wonder what informed this painting in terms of, for example, how the planes meet? I note that the face is rather two dimensional, quite flat actually, while the box in her lap seems, at the least, three dimensional. It might appear incongruous to some viewers, I should think. Curator: Neiman often frequented spaces like casinos and nightclubs where performers and "cigarette girls" worked. These spaces occupied this nexus between desire and escapism. He really was a visual journalist documenting, you might say, the theatrics of the social world. Editor: His painterly approach and distinctive coloration transform this encounter from simple sales transaction to something almost theatrical and surreal, wouldn’t you agree? Curator: Absolutely, there's a real power to how Neiman translates fleeting cultural moments into artworks that speak volumes, decades later. Editor: Indeed. His bold artistic voice helps us see beyond the product to examine what's at play underneath the surface, doesn't it?