Alex Katz (b. 1927) is one of America’s most celebrated living artists. Influenced by the visuals of advertising and movies, Katz pioneered his own brand of proto pop art, capturing stylish subjects with, or against, radiant blocks of vivid colour. His paintings have an immediacy coupled with a stark warmth – ‘quick light’, he calls it.
His latest exhibition at the Timothy Taylor gallery welcomes you with landscapes bathed in this quick light, as luminous as an Edvard Munch painting. They were recently painted at his summer house in Maine. Around a corner are drawings from 70 years ago of passengers on the New York subway, whom he preferred to sketch over art school models. The art school of life was more his thing.
In these we see him learning how to swiftly capture bold, intuitive essences. Katz always said that he strove to paint the mysterious ‘appearance’ of things, as opposed to what that hides. These sketches feature a machinating woman who might appear in Golden Age Hollywood movies, looking too ritzy for her surroundings. An older man reads a paper, but is caught looking longingly at a younger couple sat closer together.
People often talk of his work as ‘flat’, and this exhibition comments on that flatness, emphasises it. In the first room you see a cutout-like sculpture of a typically Katz-esque woman’s back. This figure is Ada, Katz’s wife, who he has been painting for 60 years. Her face is seen in profile in a large sculpture: silver hair and stainless steel. She’s in another panel round the corner, too, looking at people on the subway. She is ever present, exploring the gallery with you. It’s a touching approach that bookends a career. Subtle, minimalist, simple: simply Katz.