ART-PREVIEW:Artists Rooms-Alex Katz

Alex Katz, Black Brook, 1988, Oil paint on linen, 2140 x 4577 x 45 mm, ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland, Presented by the artist 2011Often associated with the Pop Art Movement, Alex Katz began exhibiting his work in 1954, and since that time he has produced a celebrated body of work that includes paintings, drawings, sculpture, and prints. His earliest work took inspiration from various aspects of mid-century American culture and society, including television, film, and advertising, and over the past five and a half decades he has established himself as a preeminent painter of modern life, whose distinctive portraits and lyrical landscapes bear a flattened surface and consistent economy of line.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Tate Archive

Alex Katz’s exhibition at Tate Liverpool presents a focused selection of 19 landscape paintings made between 1967 and the late 1990s drawn from “Artists Rooms”, a touring collection of over 1,600 works of Modern and Contemporary art by more than 40 major artists, jointly owned by the National Galleries of Scotland and Tate With their bright and bold palette, Katz’s paintings present a modern American take on the classical themes of landscapes, marine scenes and flowers. His immediately recognisable style draws on American and European painting traditions including the work of Matisse and Monet. At the same time, the crisp stylised surfaces of his paintings have an affinity with pop art. Primarily working from life, Katz produces painted images in which line and form are expressed through carefully composed brush strokes and planes of flat color. As well as large-scale paintings, he has consistently made smaller paintings primarily as studies, which are also considered to be a distinct body of work and will be included in the display. These modestly-scaled paintings, including “Tulips” (1969) and “3 PM, November” (1997) show the influence of Japanese painting, capturing a fleeting nature scene expressed through a minimal amount of painted expression. Works such as “Black Brook” (1988) express an immersive, more physical encounter with the natural landscape. Katz himself describes such works as “environmental”, their large-scale is essential to the function and viewer’s encounter with the work. Katz studied fine art at Cooper Union Art School in Manhattan from 1946, followed by Summer residencies at Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in Maine. It was at Skowhegan that Katz was introduced to en plein air painting, a revelation that he claims was a pivotal development in his early career. The present work was likely painted in front of the motif and embodies Katz’s signature style of smooth, hard-edged shapes and large planes of color. While Katz employed similar references to advertising (particularly billboards) and popular culture in his works, he was not considered a part of the core group of Pop artists and did not exhibit with the lynchpin figures like Lichtenstein and Warhol – he instead established his own style that ran parallel and can be considered a mixture of American Realist and Pop artist, among other things.

Info: Curator: Darren Pih, Tate Liverpool, Royal Albert Dock Liverpool, Liverpool, Duration: 23/11/18-17/3/19, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-17:00, www.tate.org.uk

Alex Katz, 3 PM, November 1997, Oil paint on board, 231 x 302 mm, ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008, © Alex Katz
Alex Katz, 3 PM, November 1997, Oil paint on board, 231 x 302 mm, ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008, © Alex Katz

 

 

Alex Katz, Ocean View 1992, Oil paint on fibreboard 231 x 320 x 6 mm, ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008, © Alex Katz
Alex Katz, Ocean View 1992, Oil paint on fibreboard 231 x 320 x 6 mm, ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008, © Alex Katz

 

 

Alex Katz, Pansies 1967, Oil paint on hardboard , 309 x 404 x 4 mm, ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008, © Alex Katz
Alex Katz, Pansies 1967, Oil paint on hardboard , 309 x 404 x 4 mm, ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008, © Alex Katz

 

 

Alex Katz, Penobscot 1999, Oil paint on board, 229 x 305 x 4 mm, ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008, © Alex Katz
Alex Katz, Penobscot 1999, Oil paint on board, 229 x 305 x 4 mm, ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008, © Alex Katz

 

 

Alex Katz, Winter Branch, 1993, Oil paint on hardboard, 230 x 302 x 4 mm, ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008, © Alex Katz
Alex Katz, Winter Branch, 1993, Oil paint on hardboard, 230 x 302 x 4 mm, ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008, © Alex Katz