Items related to Alex Katz
Synopsis
Artwork by Alex Katz. Contributions by Eric de Chassey.
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Review
As Irving Sandler, the venerable historian of postwar American art, points out in his brilliant essay for this book, Alex Katz's painting "has never been persuasively subsumed under any style. If anything, he is a one-man movement." There is the clear early influence of Matisse in Katz's full-length figures in simplified spaces or rooms, but after that Katz stands apart from other realist painters of our time. Katz cares about color deeply. He is clearly fascinated by design. But while he is often lumped in with such pretty painters as Jane Freilicher and Fairfield Porter, his work is much more ambitious. Although he is, like them, a painter of his immediate surroundings, including people, interiors, and landscapes, Katz never relies on intimacy for effect. His subjects are always part of something larger and more abstract--a sweeping environment of color and design that transcends the personal.
This book is a retrospective catalogue that will mesmerize Katz fans and perhaps persuade some of his ardent detractors to reexamine their aversion. Katz has always been reviled for exactly the things that make him popular and high-priced: his harmonious colors, his stylishness, and his accessibility. Here, Sandler thoughtfully constructs a sophisticated esthetic biography that accurately conveys Katz's independence, intelligence, and lack of sentimentality. He also manages to evoke the poetry of Katz's particular brand of beauty, with its nuances of light and air captured in doubt-free, arm-extending strokes. The only problem with this book is that the paintings' measurements are not included in the captions, so if you are not familiar with Katz's ceiling-scratcher sizes, you may find it hard to imagine their impact. --Peggy Moorman
About the Author
Alex Katz was born in 1927 in New York City. He studied at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York, and then at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. In 1972 he was awarded the Guggenheim Grant in Painting. He has had numerous solo exhibitions including institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art among many others. His work is represented in almost every major museum in the United States. He currently lives and works in New York.
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- PublisherGalerie Thaddaeus Ropac
- Publication date1999
- ISBN 10 3901935002
- ISBN 13 9783901935008
- BindingPaperback
- LanguageEnglish
- Number of pages38
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Alex Katz
Published by
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris & Salzburg, 1998
ISBN 10: 3901935002
ISBN 13: 9783901935008
Used
Soft cover
Seller: Amnesty Bookshop, Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Soft cover. Condition: Very Good. Alex Katz (illustrator). In a white card cover with black titles to spine and front and a colour painting to front. No dust jacket. Unpaginated collection of colour pictures by Alex Katz, most full page, some fold out. The book is in very good condition with only the slightest shelf-wear to extremities and slight tanning of the cover. The pages are clean and unmarked. No. Seller Inventory # 908664
Quantity: 1 available