Emily LaBarge

Alice Neel​ was born in January 1900 and grew up in a conservative town in rural Pennsylvania. She ‘couldn’t stand Anglo-Saxons’, she later said, ‘their soda-cracker lives and their inhibitions’. In 1921, she quit her job as a secretary for the US air force and enrolled at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. She was influenced by the work of the...

Ablue creature​ – part platypus, part squid, part amorphous squiggle – scuttles behind a pale three-headed figure with one webbed foot. A naked human form being consumed by (or is it wearing? becoming one with?) a large orange octopus stands with an empty box of Kellogg’s cornflakes under one bare foot. A red-haired figure, placid face peeking out of its raised parka hood,...

Born in Seattle​ in 1983, Noah Davis had just turned 32 when he died of cancer in 2015, but his vast canvases, painted in near transparent washes, cool tones and deep blacks, are the work of a mature artist. The Barbican retrospective (until 11 May) opens with a group of works made in 2007-8, a few years after Davis arrived in Los Angeles from New York, where he had cut short his studies at...