Alex Katz: Small Paintings

by Alex Katz, Dana Self, Shamim M. Momin

New York artist Alex Katz is best known for his eye-catching, large-scale portraits, figures, and landscapes, but in the mid-1950s he painted intimate works, originating the style that would become the hallmark of his mature work. By the early 1960s, he established a procedure of making small sketches using oil paint on Masonite board, which he would enlarge and modify, then make into paper cartoons to transfer to the canvas. He produces one or more small sketches for every large painting. Although Katz considers the large works to be his major productions, small-scale paintings are the underpinning of his work, revealing his initial passion for a subject--a love at first sight before it has fully matured. While his big paintings are akin to a public performance, the small paintings are rehearsals that reveal not only how he works but more importantly why he is interested in a particular subject. This volume focuses on the achievement and significance of Katz's small paintings.

120 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2001

About the author

Alex Katz is a hugely celebrated and prolific painter. He has had exhibitions in many of the world’s major museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Tate, St Ives.

Reviews

[Servabo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alex Katz is best known for his eye-catching, in-your-face, large-scale paintings - portraits, figures, and landscapes that have dominated his output for almost forty years. Katz's images, some as monumental as 10-by-23 feet, capture the essence of his subjects. His images are writ large and immediately comprehensible. Although instantly perceivable, they are slow to be fully appreciated. Close study reveals the miracle of a Katz painting: that likeness can be succinctly simulated with style and rightness. Mammoth scale provides Katz with the physical space to wield his brushes and produce the "open" paintings that for him are akin to the improvised riffs one finds in jazz. There is in fact a sub-rosa body of work that has a complex and important relationship to the great works, which is crucial to consider in order to understand his artistic achievements.

Katz's monumental portraits appear to be detached from personal reflection or revelation. They are instead beautifully placid. Conversely, Katz's small paintings, virtually one for every large painting he has done, as accessible through intimate paths that are unclear in the large paintings. Katz's paintings accommodate neither irony nor judgement, implying that they are not neutral at all, but rather devoted - both to form and content - if shorthand, portrayals of his wife, his child, his friends, and places he has encountered along his way.

The small size of the paintings also trades on intimacy, for the small paintings beckon the viewer to intimate scrutiny. You must step forward and into the painting's space rather than step away, as is necessary to gauge the large-scale works. Portrayed either alone or in a group, Katz's figures are often pressed against the surface of the painting. He also often isolates his figures in a pale background. That detached sensation paradoxically amplifies the figures' potential for emotional depth, for within that sensation lies the vague uneasiness of nostalgia.