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Alex Katz at the Pennsylvania Academy
The un-Wyeth:
Alex Katz at the Pennsylvania Academy
ANNE R. FABBRI
It’s not easy to capture the look and feel of contemporary life in a two- dimensional painting that lacks any commercial or domestic detail, but Alex Katz has done it for our era. No one else has been able to convey the veneer of cool acceptance and bland assertion inherent in our social intercourse. Katz succeeds even when Maine is the basis for subject matter. Somehow the human element is always present, in spirit if not by image.
“Alex Katz in Maine,” an exhibition of more than 40 paintings and two-dimensional metal cutouts, is on view at the recently opened Hamilton building of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. See it and banish the cobwebs of pseudo nostalgia created by other recent museum exhibitions in town. This is the real thing. It tells us what life is like here and now: i.e., if you are white, trim and “in” (or wanna be). The paintings will become cultural archives for future generations.
Katz is often called a New York artist because he was born in Brooklyn in 1927, raised in St. Albans, Queens, when it was still a suburban community, and studied art at Cooper Union in New York City. But he also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and for more than 50 years he has divided his time between Maine and Manhattan. Although this is the first show dedicated to Katz’s work in Maine, it forms an overview of his major themes and interests from the late ‘50s to today. It was organized by Suzette McAvoy of the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine and Lynn Marsden-Atlass, senior curator of the Academy.
Those cool Maine breezes
Alex Katz creates paintings that initially resemble commercial billboards that just happen to lack the sponsor’s brand. The paintings are oversized, lack proper one-point perspective (the method of representing, say, railroad tracks as if they will converge in the far distance) and convey no drama. But that is just the beginning, and this exhibition provides the perfect opportunity to explore what makes these art works so memorable, so definitive of our time. Portraits of Katz’s wife, family and friends are intermingled with landscapes that are almost abstract yet render the cool breezes of Maine almost palpable.
A complacent cow made of cut-out, painted metal greets us at the entrance. Flanking the door is Katz’s 1963 family portrait of the artist, his wife Ada and very young son Vincent. This perfectly sited painting invites you into their world. Somehow it makes you hope everything will turn out well for them, but the thought is too sentimental to acknowledge publicly. Everyone in the subsequent paintings appears self-possessed and coolly capable of managing things. Now we may find a twinge of envy coursing through our veins.
Katz’s portraits might spill beyond the confines of the canvas, leaving us to imagine the top of the head or the rest of the body. They are outsized, with wide-eyed, penetrating expressions that reveal little of their own emotions but leave you acutely aware of their human vulnerability. Despite our verbal assertions of wanting intimacy, this detachment seems to be the current expression. Look around you. It is the look we pass on the street, in the malls and at any social gathering. Katz has captured it. It’s not elitist; it’s just the way things are today.
A vulnerable self-portrait
One exception is Katz’s self-portrait of 1991. His head is the only part of his body seen above the water, with abstracted trees in the background. Katz seems more open and vulnerable, less guarded perhaps, just trying desperately to keep his head above the waters of life itself.
Paintings of people in the landscape sometimes look like early Renaissance murals, with attenuated figures in a row in the foreground and abstracted landscapes that defy any sense of views through a window. Katz has adopted the artificiality of a billboard; the main image is everything. Occasionally it doesn’t work and the painting just seems awkward and a bit grotesque. Walking on the Beach (2002) is more annoying than informative, with disparate figures and fragmented composition. The running child on the right seems completely out of scale, with a too-large head, deformed arms and small body. The child in the man’s arms has puny legs and wooden arms, and the adult’s left foot is too long. The central figures are out-sized, as is the figure on the left. Although the beach is closely observed, the sea appears vertical, as in a medieval prayer book.
What a good artist does for us
Katz’s landscapes are closely painted nature studies of light, shadows and reflections. After looking at the splotches of sunlight reflected through the trees on to his Yellow House in Maine, you then become aware of this same quality in your own garden or city park. Good artists change our vision and make us aware of visual delights that we might have overlooked. However, Luna Park (1960), an oil-on-board painting of a subject that was trite even when Munch did it, should have been omitted.
I liked Katz’s huge oil painting, Meadow (1997), a view from above looking down on grasses in a field, no sky. Unfortunately, due to its long horizontal span— ten feet by 20— the painting is marred by ripples from the stretching of the canvas. The Academy tried in vain to correct this but nothing seemed to help. Light 2 (1992) shares the same flaw, but to a much lesser degree.
Black Brook (1990), a watery view of reflections and movement in shades of black plus white, invites contemplation of a mysterious world we cannot enter. Two Poplars (2006) soars in a towering, vertical expanse of tree trunks, leaves and shadows with no sky visible— a good thing, since Katz’s skies of solid clouds and flat skies are better left undefined. I don’t understand his Lily View Oceanview (2006): thin strip of beach, sea grasses in the foreground and huge close-up images of daylilies in the upper half of the canvas. Where are they supposed to be? Where is the ocean? Is this Katz’s new vision?
A Renaissance tradition
Walk Away (2005), creates a fitting conclusion to the show: An oil painting of three figures viewed from the rear, a young man and two young women in an abstracted landscape of greenery, paths of sunlight and a light sky. This painting makes sense of the curator’s assertion that Katz works in the traditional Renaissance manner of sketching on site, supplementing these with drawings and small paintings in his studio, enlarging the drawings, gridding them and transferring the lines to prepared canvases.
Solo exhibitions are tricky. Sometimes you leave them thinking the artist was not as good as you had thought: Midway through the show, ennui sets in, and probably you’ll never again go out of your way to see works by that artist, such as Marino Marini seen some years ago at the Guggenheim. Not so with Alex Katz. Whereas one painting might seem too cool for comfort, too detached to be significant, 40-plus paintings displayed together create life and excitement and a new appreciation of nature and art. You have only until September 3, so take advantage of this opportunity.
To view a response, click here.
Alex Katz at the Pennsylvania Academy
ANNE R. FABBRI
It’s not easy to capture the look and feel of contemporary life in a two- dimensional painting that lacks any commercial or domestic detail, but Alex Katz has done it for our era. No one else has been able to convey the veneer of cool acceptance and bland assertion inherent in our social intercourse. Katz succeeds even when Maine is the basis for subject matter. Somehow the human element is always present, in spirit if not by image.
“Alex Katz in Maine,” an exhibition of more than 40 paintings and two-dimensional metal cutouts, is on view at the recently opened Hamilton building of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. See it and banish the cobwebs of pseudo nostalgia created by other recent museum exhibitions in town. This is the real thing. It tells us what life is like here and now: i.e., if you are white, trim and “in” (or wanna be). The paintings will become cultural archives for future generations.
Katz is often called a New York artist because he was born in Brooklyn in 1927, raised in St. Albans, Queens, when it was still a suburban community, and studied art at Cooper Union in New York City. But he also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and for more than 50 years he has divided his time between Maine and Manhattan. Although this is the first show dedicated to Katz’s work in Maine, it forms an overview of his major themes and interests from the late ‘50s to today. It was organized by Suzette McAvoy of the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine and Lynn Marsden-Atlass, senior curator of the Academy.
Those cool Maine breezes
Alex Katz creates paintings that initially resemble commercial billboards that just happen to lack the sponsor’s brand. The paintings are oversized, lack proper one-point perspective (the method of representing, say, railroad tracks as if they will converge in the far distance) and convey no drama. But that is just the beginning, and this exhibition provides the perfect opportunity to explore what makes these art works so memorable, so definitive of our time. Portraits of Katz’s wife, family and friends are intermingled with landscapes that are almost abstract yet render the cool breezes of Maine almost palpable.
A complacent cow made of cut-out, painted metal greets us at the entrance. Flanking the door is Katz’s 1963 family portrait of the artist, his wife Ada and very young son Vincent. This perfectly sited painting invites you into their world. Somehow it makes you hope everything will turn out well for them, but the thought is too sentimental to acknowledge publicly. Everyone in the subsequent paintings appears self-possessed and coolly capable of managing things. Now we may find a twinge of envy coursing through our veins.
Katz’s portraits might spill beyond the confines of the canvas, leaving us to imagine the top of the head or the rest of the body. They are outsized, with wide-eyed, penetrating expressions that reveal little of their own emotions but leave you acutely aware of their human vulnerability. Despite our verbal assertions of wanting intimacy, this detachment seems to be the current expression. Look around you. It is the look we pass on the street, in the malls and at any social gathering. Katz has captured it. It’s not elitist; it’s just the way things are today.
A vulnerable self-portrait
One exception is Katz’s self-portrait of 1991. His head is the only part of his body seen above the water, with abstracted trees in the background. Katz seems more open and vulnerable, less guarded perhaps, just trying desperately to keep his head above the waters of life itself.
Paintings of people in the landscape sometimes look like early Renaissance murals, with attenuated figures in a row in the foreground and abstracted landscapes that defy any sense of views through a window. Katz has adopted the artificiality of a billboard; the main image is everything. Occasionally it doesn’t work and the painting just seems awkward and a bit grotesque. Walking on the Beach (2002) is more annoying than informative, with disparate figures and fragmented composition. The running child on the right seems completely out of scale, with a too-large head, deformed arms and small body. The child in the man’s arms has puny legs and wooden arms, and the adult’s left foot is too long. The central figures are out-sized, as is the figure on the left. Although the beach is closely observed, the sea appears vertical, as in a medieval prayer book.
What a good artist does for us
Katz’s landscapes are closely painted nature studies of light, shadows and reflections. After looking at the splotches of sunlight reflected through the trees on to his Yellow House in Maine, you then become aware of this same quality in your own garden or city park. Good artists change our vision and make us aware of visual delights that we might have overlooked. However, Luna Park (1960), an oil-on-board painting of a subject that was trite even when Munch did it, should have been omitted.
I liked Katz’s huge oil painting, Meadow (1997), a view from above looking down on grasses in a field, no sky. Unfortunately, due to its long horizontal span— ten feet by 20— the painting is marred by ripples from the stretching of the canvas. The Academy tried in vain to correct this but nothing seemed to help. Light 2 (1992) shares the same flaw, but to a much lesser degree.
Black Brook (1990), a watery view of reflections and movement in shades of black plus white, invites contemplation of a mysterious world we cannot enter. Two Poplars (2006) soars in a towering, vertical expanse of tree trunks, leaves and shadows with no sky visible— a good thing, since Katz’s skies of solid clouds and flat skies are better left undefined. I don’t understand his Lily View Oceanview (2006): thin strip of beach, sea grasses in the foreground and huge close-up images of daylilies in the upper half of the canvas. Where are they supposed to be? Where is the ocean? Is this Katz’s new vision?
A Renaissance tradition
Walk Away (2005), creates a fitting conclusion to the show: An oil painting of three figures viewed from the rear, a young man and two young women in an abstracted landscape of greenery, paths of sunlight and a light sky. This painting makes sense of the curator’s assertion that Katz works in the traditional Renaissance manner of sketching on site, supplementing these with drawings and small paintings in his studio, enlarging the drawings, gridding them and transferring the lines to prepared canvases.
Solo exhibitions are tricky. Sometimes you leave them thinking the artist was not as good as you had thought: Midway through the show, ennui sets in, and probably you’ll never again go out of your way to see works by that artist, such as Marino Marini seen some years ago at the Guggenheim. Not so with Alex Katz. Whereas one painting might seem too cool for comfort, too detached to be significant, 40-plus paintings displayed together create life and excitement and a new appreciation of nature and art. You have only until September 3, so take advantage of this opportunity.
To view a response, click here.
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