Alex Katz, American born 1927
from a retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022/23
Alex Katz lives in New York city. He spends part of the year in the state of Maine with whose ocean light he became acquainted in 1949 when he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture which has nurtured so many American artists.
The artist has developed his own style and, while he has absorbed elements of ambient art world styles, he has not been absorbed into any tendency.
This seems to have irritated a sizeable number of his critics – their charges are about the apparent facility and blandness and unchangingness of his style –
and no museum has held a retrospective of his work since the late 1980’s.
Passing, 1962-63, oil on canvas
Alex Katz, American born 1929. ?Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
The artist has concentrated on portraits of individuals and groups of people whom he knows.
In the late 1980s he began to paint large, enveloping landscapes.
In all his work, Katz is after what he calls ’empirical perception’.
He says that he is painting what he sees at the moment of the seeing.
In this exhibition, only one painting falls outside this schema, according to the artist: Golden Image.
The sunset is immersing the woods around the cottage in Maine which has been the artist’s summer home since 1954.
Of this painting, the artist said that he has never painted like this: an image in memory which he has analyzed.
Golden Image, 2017, oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Artist’s loan to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
What the artist sees does not penetrate the surfaces of his human subjects; or of his flowers.
He represents their visible surfaces in idealized form.
This is also true of his buildings. Not idealized but certainly pristine.
Rose Bud, 1967, ?media; ?ownership
Alex Katz, American born 1929. On view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
On the left, a portrait of the artist’s wife and son dating from 1967.
Blue Flag, 1967, oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Private collection loan to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
Varick, 1988, oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Loaned by the Whitney Museum of (North) American Art, NY to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
Purple Wind, 1995, oil on linen.
Alex Katz, American born 1927. On display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2016
Cornice, 1997, oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Loaned to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022 by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
In the galleries
West 2, 1998, oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Loaned by the Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
One of the paintings of the city at night using the view from west-facing windows of the artist’s long-lived 5th-floor loft in Soho.
White Impatients 1, 2012, oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Loaned by the artist to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
Tulips 3, 2013, oil on linen.
Alex Katz, American born 1927. MOMA, NY
Dogwood, 2013, oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Loaned by the artist to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
The natural landscapes, which the artist began to paint in the late 1980s, cannot easily be about their outside surfaces.
The museum notes that these paintings, like others, are based loosely on oil sketches of
‘an instant of heightened perception, the state of “absolute awareness” that the artist prizes’.
Pink Sky, 1955, oil on board
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Loaned by the artist to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
When he paints in his studio, he applies the memory of the sensation that he had at the moment when he experienced the scene or object he is painting.
Luna Park, 1960, oil on board
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Loaned by the Art Institute of Chicago to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
Light and water have been the main focus of the artist in his landscape paintings.
Swamp Maple (4:30), 1968, oil on linen.
Alex Katz, American born 1927. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Rain, 1989, oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Loaned by the Albertina Museum, Vienna to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
The artist’s techniques have resulted in landscape paintings which have an effect opposite to those of his portraits:
they envelop, immerse and draw in the viewer.
They engage the viewer’s imagination or memory or longing.
Lake Light, 1992, oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Loaned by Sammlung Stifftung Kunst und Natur , Bad Heilbrunn, Germany to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
Katz deploys a greater range of types of brushwork.
These landscapes are full of the energy of the Abstract Impressionists and canvas sizes are also as large as those of the Abstract Impressionists.
Some of these images approach almost complete abstraction.
Gold and Black 2, 1993. oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Loaned by a private gallery to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
It is often said that Alex Katz’s portraits are popular with the public because they are accessible
even if you are somewhat alienated, at the same time, by their glitzy, glinty big-city coldness.
They are accessible, in other words, in the same way that an Andy Warhol painting of a can of Campbell soup is accessible.
Nothing to fear here. No need to get involved or worked up about anything. Cool.
Black Brook 16, oil on linen, 2001
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Loaned by the artist to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
The landscapes, on the other hand, you recognize. You may long to witness these scenes (again). The reality, that is.
Unlike the portraits which may linger in your memory; but for which no longing develops.
Untitled Cityscape 4, oil on linen, 2014
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Loaned by the artist to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
I suppose you recognize that the artist is playing with the artistic tradition with his portraits and his flowers.
He proves that figuration and representation can be taken up again in the wake of abstract and conceptual work and
be moved forward, using technical skill and colour, into a realm in which interiority has little place and an uncompromising presence and presentation is everything.
Snow Scene, 2014, oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Loaned by the artist to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
Fog, 2016, oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Loaned by the artist to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
When it comes to landscape here is a different story.
The artist is emotionally involved with his landscapes. He is taken by them.
He wants to transmit their charge to you.
Field 1, 2017, oil on linen.
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Loaned by the artist to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
No paintings of people in a landscape were included in this exhibition.
The combination may have revealed the effect of the natural world on his people;
the effect on his own style of the mingling of cool hard and motionless
with light and water and wind and sun and gleaming snow and night and warmth.
Yellow Tree 1, 2020, oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Private collection loan to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
Twilight 2, oil on canvas, 2018
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Private collection loan to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
Blue Night, 2018, oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Loaned by the artist to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
Sunrise, 2019, oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Artist’s loan to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
Ocean 9, oil on linen, ?date
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Artist loan to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
Tree, 2019, oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Private collection loan to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022
White Reflection 2020, oil on linen
Alex Katz, American born 1929. Artist loan to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY in 2022