Post War and Contemporary Art

Provenance:

Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago

Lot Essay:

A Sliver of Katz’s World 

The subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and international acclaim, the signature style of Alex Katz (American, b. 1920) is a deliberately vibrant visual language between realism and abstraction, ambivalence and intimacy. Coming of age alongside the titans of New York’s Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s, Katz boldly favored flatness of color and form rather than gestural primacy and raw emotion. His work is deceptively simple; his technique of painting wet on wet evokes a lustrous finish to his canvases, defying two-dimensionality even in their flatness.  

The bulk of Katz’s oeuvre can be divided into two categories: portraiture and landscape, and we are pleased to offer you an excellent example of each in Ariel (2016-17) and Golden Field #1 (2001).  

Part familiar figure and part otherworldly specter, Ariel is a quietly moody portrait of Ariel Vieth, a model and frequent muse of Katz’s. Her back is turned to the viewer, the shock of brightness in her hair balancing out the darkened background; you can somehow tell she is beautiful without even seeing her face. Ariel feels like spotting a friend across the street, like the anticipation of wondering if she will turn around and see you, too. Ariel is not the only recurring character in Katz’s work – in their 60–year marriage, Katz has painted over 250 portraits of his wife, Ada. "It's a conceit in a way," Katz said in an interview. "It's like you can paint the same river twice differently. I often paint in the same place. It's like painting Ada over and over again—to see if you can get something else out of the same subject matter." (Quoted in Alex Katz is Cooler Than Ever, Smithsonian Magazine, August 2009)  

This repetition is also found in Golden Field #1, the first in a series of landscapes drenched in a buttery yellow light. In both Golden Field #1 and Ariel, Katz is simply painting his environment, flash-in-the-pan moments he captures in thick brushstrokes and meditatively stylized forms. In both works, Katz shares his world, either in downtown New York City among the cultural avant-garde, or in the heart of nature at his home in coastal Maine. In looking at his work, the viewer is transported and feels as though they too are in on it, that they are someone who sees the specialness in otherwise normal moments, seeing beauty just as Katz can.  

"Realist painting has to do with leaving out a lot of detail,” said Katz in an interview, “I think my painting can be a little shocking in all that it leaves out. But what happens is that the mind fills in what's missing. It's about being able to see something in a specific way. Painting is a way of making you see what I saw." (Quoted in I prefer Stan Getz to Sartre, The Irish Times, March 3, 2007)