Alex Katz is a New York-based artist, well known for his large-scale figurative paintings depicting simple figures, landscapes, and still life.
Katz counted among the second-generation New York School painters. In the late 1950s, Katz attempted to give greater realism to his paintings and became more often created portrait paintings of his friends and family, especially his wife, Ada.
Katz’s paintings are characterized by his use of flat surfaces of color, figuration, also wide and bold brushstrokes. Katz has his own style that combines both abstraction and representation.
Red Ada (2011) is one of Katz’s paintings of his wife. This painting depicts a woman in black clothes and a wide smile. She appears in front of a red and flat background. A simple short haircut and a nice necklace made her look stylish. Katz always concerns about style and fashion in his figure paintings because he considers fashion is in the immediate present and a means to reach the present.
Alex Katz has painted more than 250 portraits of his wife, Ada during their 60-year marriage. Ada is sometimes seen in large-scale close-up, multiplied on a canvas, or sculptural painted cut-outs. Ada’s various facial expressions and gestures can stir the viewers’ emotions of joy and contempt.
Katz was also highly influenced by films, television, and billboard advertising in mid-century American culture. In the early 1960s, Katz created large-scale paintings with dramatically cropped faces. He also increasingly painted groups of figures, depicting the social world of painters, poets, critics, and friends circle around him.
The Cocktail Party (1965) is one of Katz’s early group portraits. This painting portrays a cocktail party in a room of a skyscraper building. People’s faces tend to be pale, while their hair and attires are colorful. Using different colors, the artist makes viewers focus on the lifestyle and atmosphere that is built in the room.
Katz also sometimes paints landscapes, flowers, and still life. Weeping Cherry (2007-08) presents bright pink in a blue sky. This painting is between realism, expressionism, and abstractionism. The colors and patterns remind me of cherry blossom petals in spring that bring hope but also a reminder of the momentary of life.
Katz’s works are often called figurative paintings. In Modern terms, ‘figurative art’ refers to art that relatively maintains the real world as its subject matter in paintings, compared with ‘abstract art. However, modern figurative is also different from modern realism, in which figurative art uses its own idioms, that in fact have proximity with expressionism.
Katz builds his own figurative art that combines the spirit of abstract expressionism, realism, and American pop culture.
Alex Katz is an incredible artist who has had a long career. Now, he is 95 years old and preparing his upcoming exhibition that will run at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in October 2022.
