“I want to paint what I see,” says Alex Katz. “I live in New York and I go up to Maine, and that’s what I paint.” And there in a nutshell is the essence of this retrospective of the New York artist at Timothy Taylor Gallery, London. Now entering his late 80s, Katz is a significant and influential figure in American art. This exhibition looks at his work from the 1970s to the 1990s through both his paintings and his unusual aluminium cut-outs, and covers his city scenes and his rural adventures.
Katz’s compositions are cinematic in that they are often cropped in tight on the action – so much so that sometimes we are left wondering what is going on out of shot that would give us the context. In Ada, Ada – a portrait of his wife who appears many times in Katz’s work – this is taken to the extreme as the image is not only cropped enigmatically, but repeated as though we are looking at two frames from a strip of film. Black Stockings removes the background completely, with the six flirtatious young ladies cut out in metal, likened by one critic to Katz’s version of a quick anecdote. 70s / 80s / 90s closes on 17 April.
Exhibition view.
© Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Courtesy, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London
Alex Katz
Black Stockings, 1987
Oil on aluminum (6 pieces)
Overall size: 66 x 240 in.
167.6 x 609.6 cm
Alex Katz
Vincent and Vivien, 1987
Oil on linen
72 x 72 in.
182.9 x 182.9 cm
Exhibition view.
© Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Courtesy, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London
Alex Katz
Windows, 1994
Oil on canvas
66 x 90 in.
167.5 x 228.5 cm
Alex Katz
Dusk 2, 1992
Oil on linen
48 x 48 in.
121.9 x 121.9 cm
Alex Katz
Three Cows, 1981
Oil on canvas
96 x 144 1/2 in.
243.4 x 367 cm
