Alex Katz | |
|---|---|
 Katz in 2006 | |
| Born | (1927-07-24)July 24, 1927 (age 97) New York City, U.S. |
| Education | The Cooper Union,Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture |
| Known for | Sculpture,Painting,Printmaking |
| Movement | East CoastFigurative painting,New Realism,Pop Art |
| Spouse | Ada Katz (m. 1958) |
Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is an Americanfigurative artist known for his paintings,sculptures, andprints. Since 1951, Katz's work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally. He is well known for his large paintings, whose bold simplicity and heightened colors are considered as precursors toPop Art.
Alex Katz was born July 24, 1927, to aJewish family[1] inBrooklyn,New York, the son of an émigré who had lost a factory he owned in Ukraine, Odesa.[2] In 1928 the family moved toSt. Albans, Queens, where Katz grew up.[3]
From 1946 to 1949 Katz studied at theCooper Union in New York, and from 1949 to 1950 at theSkowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture inMaine. Skowhegan exposed him to painting from life, which proved pivotal in his development as a painter and remains a staple of his practices today. Katz has said that Skowhegan'splein air painting gave him "a reason to devote my life to painting."[4] Every year from early June to mid-September, Katz moves from hisSoHo loft to a 19th-century clapboard farmhouse inLincolnville, Maine.[5] A summer resident of Lincolnville since 1954, he has developed a close relationship withColby College.[citation needed] From 1954 to 1960, he made a number of small collages of still lifes, Maine landscapes, and small figures.[6] He metAda Del Moro, who had studied biology atNew York University, at a gallery opening in 1957.[2] In 1960, Katz had his first (and only) son, Vincent Katz. Vincent Katz had two sons, Isaac and Oliver, who have been the subjects of Katz's paintings.
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Katz has admitted to destroying a thousand paintings during his first ten years as a painter in order to find his style. Since the 1950s, he worked to create art more freely in the sense that he tried to paint "faster than I can think".[7] His works seem simple, but according to Katz they are more reductive, which is fitting to his personality.[8] "One thing I don't want to do is things already done. As for particular subject matter, I don't like narratives, basically."[9]
Katz achieved public prominence in the 1980s.[10] He is well known for his large paintings, whose bold simplicity and heightened colors are now seen as precursors toPop Art.[11]
Katz's paintings are divided almost equally into portraiture and landscape. Since the 1960s he has painted views of New York (especially his immediate surroundings in Soho) and landscapes of Maine, where he spends several months every year, as well as portraits of family members, artists, writers and New York socialites.[12] His paintings are defined by their flatness of color and form, their economy of line, and their emotional detachment.[13] A key source of inspiration isKitagawa Utamaro's woodcuts.[14]
In the early 1960s, influenced by films, television, and billboard advertising, Katz began painting large-scale paintings, often with dramatically cropped faces.Ada Katz, whom he married in 1958, has been the subject of over 250[15] of his portraits.[16] To make one of his large works, Katz paints a small oil sketch of a subject on amasonite board; the sitting might take an hour and a half. He then makes a small, detailed drawing in pencil or charcoal, with the subject returning, perhaps, for the artist to make corrections. Katz next blows up the drawing into a "cartoon", sometimes using an overhead projector, and transfers it to an enormous canvas via "pouncing"—a Renaissance-era technique involving powdered pigment pushed through tiny perforations pricked into the cartoon to recreate the composition on the surface to be painted. Katz pre-mixes all his colors and gets his brushes ready. Then he paints the canvas—12 feet (3.7 m) wide by 7 feet (2.1 m) high or even larger—in a session of six or seven hours.
Beginning in the late 1950s, Katz developed a technique of painting on cut panels, first of wood, then aluminum, calling them "cutouts". These works occupied space like sculptures, but their physicality is compressed into planes, as with paintings.[17] The later cutouts are attached to wide, U-shaped aluminum stands, with a flickering, cinematic presence enhanced by warm spotlights. Most are close-ups, showing either front-and-back views of the same figure's head or figures who regard each other from opposite edges of the stand.[18]
After 1964, Katz increasingly portrayed groups of figures. He continued painting these complex groups into the 1970s, portraying the social world of painters, poets, critics, and other colleagues that surrounded him. He began designing sets and costumes for choreographerPaul Taylor in the early 1960s, and he has painted many images of dancers throughout the years.One Flight Up (1968) consists of more than 30 portraits of some of the leading lights of New York's intelligentsia during the late 1960s, such as the poetJohn Ashbery, the art criticIrving Sandler, and the curatorHenry Geldzahler, who championedAndy Warhol. Each portrait is painted using oils on both sides of a sliver of aluminum that has then been cut into the shape of the subject's head and shoulders. The silhouettes are arranged predominantly in four long rows on a plain metal table.[19]
After hisWhitney exhibition in 1974, Katz focused on landscapes, saying, "I wanted to make an environmental landscape where you were IN it."[20] In the late 1980s, Katz took on a new subject in his work: fashion models in designer clothing, includingKate Moss andChristy Turlington.[4] "I've always been interested in fashion because it's ephemeral", he said.[21]
In 1965, Katz also embarked on a prolific career inprintmaking. He went on to make many editions in lithography, etching, silkscreen, woodcut and linoleum cut, producing over 400 print editions in his lifetime. TheAlbertina, Vienna, and theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston, hold complete collections of Katz's print oeuvre. The Albertina released a printcatalogue raisonné in 2011.
During his time as a visiting artist at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, Katz approached Japanese artist and printmakerHitoshi Nakazato, an associate professor at the Graduate School of Fine Art, to make a series of prints.[22]
In 1977, Katz was asked to create a work to be produced in billboard format aboveTimes Square, New York City. The work, at 42nd Street and 7th Avenue, consisted of afrieze comprising 23 portrait heads of women. Each portrait was 20 feet (6.1 m) high and based on a study Katz did from life. The billboard extended 247 feet (75 m) along two sides of theRKO General building and wrapped in three tiers above on a 60-foot (18 m) tower. In 1980, the U.S.General Services Administration's Art in Architecture Program commissioned Katz to create an oil-on-canvas mural in the new United States Attorney's Building atFoley Square, New York City. The mural, inside the Silvio V. Mollo Building at Cardinal Hayes Place & Park Row, is 20 feet (6.1 m) high by 20 feet wide.[23] In 2005, Katz participated in a public art project titled "Paint in the City", commissioned byUnited Technologies Corporation and organized byCreative Time. Katz's work,Give Me Tomorrow, was 28 feet (8.5 m) tall and 53 feet (16 m) long on a billboard space above the Bowery Bar on the corner of the Bowery and East Fourth Street. It was hand-painted by sign painters and installed in 2005.[24]
Katz has collaborated with poets and writers since the 1960s, producing several notable editions, such as "Face of the Poet",[25] combining his images with work by poets in his circle, such asTed Berrigan,Ann Lauterbach,Carter Ratcliff, andGerard Malanga. He worked withJohn Ashbery on the publications "Fragment"[26] in 1966 and "Coma Berenices"[27] in 2005. He worked with Vincent Katz on "A Tremor in the Morning"[28] and "Swimming Home".[29] Katz also made 25 etchings for the Arion Press edition ofGloria with 28 poems byBill Berkson. Other collaborators includeRobert Creeley, with whom he produced "Edges"[30] and "Legeia: A Libretto",[31] andKenneth Koch ("Interlocking Lives").[32] In 1962,Harper's Bazaar incorporated cutouts by Katz for a four-page fashion spread.
Numerous publications outline Katz's career's many facets: fromAlex Katz in Maine[33] published by theFarnsworth Art Museum to the catalogueAlex Katz New York[34] published by theIrish Museum of Modern Art.Alex Katz Seeing Drawing, Making,[35] published in 2008, describes Katz's multiple-stage process of first producing charcoal drawings, small oil studies, and large cartoons for placing the image on the canvas and the final painting. In 2005,Phaidon Press published an illustrated survey,Alex Katz, byCarter Ratcliff,Robert Storr andIwona Blazwick. In 1989, a special edition ofParkett was devoted to Katz.[36]Francesco Clemente,Enzo Cucchi,Liam Gillick,Peter Halley,David Salle, andRichard Prince have written essays about his work or conducted interviews with him.[37]
| Title | Year | Location | |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Ella Marion in Red Sweater | 1946 | Museum of Modern Art |
 | Art School | 1952 | Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Museum |
 | Double Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg | 1959 | Colby College Museum of Art |
 | The Black Dress | 1960 | Museum Brandhorst |
 | The Red Smile | 1963 | Whitney Museum |
 | Blue Umbrella 2 | 1972 | Collection of Peter Blum, NYC |
 | Red Tie | 1979 | Museum of Modern Art |
 | Red Coat | 1982 | Metropolitan Museum of Art |
 | Soho Morning | 1987 | San Francisco Museum of Modern Art |
 | Purple Wind | 1995 | Metropolitan Museum of Art |
 | Tan Woods | 1998 | Colby College Museum of Art |
 | Yellow House 2 | 2001 | Art Institute of Chicago |
 | Winter Landscape | 2007 | High Museum of Art |
 | Black Hat 2 | 2010 | The Albertina |
 | CK 17 | 2017 | Whitney Museum |
 | Dancers 5 | 2021 | Colby College Museum of Art |
 | Ada | 2023 | Colby College Museum of Art |
 | Trees on Red 4 | 2024 | Personal Collection of the Artist |
Since 1951, Katz's work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally.[3] Katz's first solo show was an exhibition of paintings at the Roko Gallery in New York in 1954. In 1974 theWhitney Museum of American Art showedAlex Katz Prints, followed by a traveling retrospective exhibition of paintings and cutouts titledAlex Katz in 1986. The subject of over 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group shows internationally, Katz has since had retrospectives at museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York;Brooklyn Museum, New York; theJewish Museum, New York; theIrish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin;Colby College Museum of Art, Maine; Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden; Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga; and theSaatchi Gallery, London.[38] In 1998, a survey of his landscapes was shown at theP.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, featuring nearly 40 pared-down paintings of urban or pastoral motifs.[39]
Katz is represented byGladstone Gallery in New York,Timothy Taylor Gallery in London, andGalerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris/Salzburg. Before showing with Brown, he had been represented byPace Gallery for 10 years and byMarlborough Gallery for 30 years.[40]
Katz's prints are distributed in Europe by Galerie Frank Fluegel inNuremberg. In 2022, a retrospective of his work was on display at the Thyssen National Museum of Spain, the first time Katz´s work had been displayed in that country.
Katz's work is in the collections of over 100 public institutions worldwide, including theHonolulu Museum of Art; theMuseum of Modern Art, New York; theMetropolitan Museum of Art, New York; theWhitney Museum of American Art, New York; theSmithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; theCarnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; theArt Institute of Chicago; theCleveland Museum of Art; theTate Gallery, London; theCentre Georges Pompidou, Paris;Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tokyo; theNationalgalerie, Berlin; and theMuseum Brandhorst, Munich.[41] In 2010,Anthony d'Offay donated a group of Katz's works to theNational Galleries of Scotland and the Tate; they are shown as part of the national touring programme,Artist Rooms.[42][43] In 2011, Katz donatedRush (1971), a series of 37 painted life-size cutout heads on aluminum, to theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston; the piece is installed, frieze-like, in its own space.[44]
Katz has received numerous awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for Painting in 1972, and in 1987 bothPratt Institute's Mary Buckley Award for Achievement and the Queens Museum of Art Award for Lifetime Achievement. TheChicago Bar Association honored Katz with the Award for Art in Public Places in 1985. In 1978, Katz received a U.S. government grant to participate in an educational and cultural exchange with the USSR.[45] He was inducted by theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters in 1988, and recognized with honorary doctorates byColby College, Maine (1984), andColgate University, Hamilton, New York (2005). In 1990 he was elected into theNational Academy of Design as an associate member, and he became a full Academician in 1994. He was named the Philip Morris Distinguished Artist at theAmerican Academy in Berlin in 2001 and received the Cooper Union Annual Artist of the City Award in 2000. In 1994,Cooper Union Art School created the Alex Katz Visiting Chair in Painting with an endowment provided by the sale of ten paintings Katz donated, a position held first by Katz and art criticMerlin James.[46] In 2005, Katz was the honored artist at theChicago Humanities Festival's Inaugural Richard Gray Annual Visual Arts Series. In 2007, he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from theNational Academy of Design, New York.[38]
In October 1996, theColby College Museum of Art opened a 10,000-square-foot (930 m2) wing dedicated to Katz that features more than 400 oil paintings,collages, and prints he donated.[47] In addition, he has purchased numerous pieces for the museum by artists such asJennifer Bartlett,Chuck Close,Francesco Clemente, andElizabeth Murray. In 2004, he curated a show at Colby of younger paintersElizabeth Peyton,Peter Doig andMerlin James, who work in the same figurative territory staked out by Katz.[2]
In 1996, Vincent Katz and Vivien Bittencourt produced a video,Alex Katz: Five Hours, documenting the production of his paintingJanuary 3,[48] and in 2008 he was the subject of a documentary directed by Heinz Peter Schwerfel,What About Style? Alex Katz: a Painter's Painter.
Katz's work is said to have influenced many painters, such asDavid Salle, Helena Wurzel,Peter Halley, andRichard Prince,[13] as well as younger artists likePeter Doig,Julian Opie,Liam Gillick,Elizabeth Peyton, Barb Januszkiewicz,Johan Andersson,[19] andBrian Alfred.[15]
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