Alex Katz (b. 1927), the subject of an eight-decades retrospective, Gathering, currently filling the spiral ramps of the Guggenheim Museum, has had my respect and admiration since his mid-career retrospective at the Whitney, in 1986—and as much for going against the grain of contemporaneous art markets as for his luminous paintings.  

Katz grew up in a bohemian, first-generation Russian emigrant family in Brooklyn. In 1946 he entered The Cooper Union School of Art, where he studied until 1949, followed by two summers painting en plein air at the Skowhegan school for Painting and Sculpture, in Maine. The exhibition begins with his expressive subway drawings of commuters on their way to work in Manhattan (below), along with a loving portrayal of his mother, a performer in Yiddish theater. These two pieces from his school years set the pace for what is to come. 

When he started out as a figurative painter in the 1950s, Abstract Expressionism continued to dominate New York’s art world, as seen in galleries such as Leo Castelli, Betty Parsons and the Stable. Katz, however, remained true to his interest in people as subjects for his art. His own circle included a community of poets, artists, dancers, musicians, and critics, including Frank O’Hara, Edwin Denby, Paul Taylor, LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), Joe Brainard, Jane Freilicher, Fairfield Porter, Lois Dodd, Kynaston McShine, Anne Waldman, John Ashbery, Meredith Monk, Allen Ginsberg, Mariko Mori, Bill T. Jones, and Joan Jonas. By the decade’s end, his interest in portraiture had taken hold; his sitters included this circle of friends, and especially his wife and muse Ada, who became the subject of over 1,000 drawings, etchings, paintings and cut-outs over the years. Below: The Black Dress, 1960

The plein air painting that occupied Katz during his summers on the coast of Maine informed his studio portraits and paintings of his friends. With Paul Taylor (1959, above), he conjures up a luminous quality of light the makes the dancer’s skin seem to glow; even the skin tone seems to glimmer through his white leotards. In a 1963 portrait of Kynaston McShine, MoMA’s contemporary art curator at the time, a rosy undertone illuminates his black skin as if he were lighted from within.

His fascination with billboard advertising led Katz to begin enlarging these portraits to mural scale; the simplicity with which he delineated the features of Ada and Vincent (1967, above right) a nearly eight-foot-high canvas painted with his then-characteristic flat color, still shapes their volume and form with an invisible anatomical precision. Along the way up the ramp, these luminous portraits and interiors with figures are joined by the landscapes Katz painted during the summer months in Maine. In some cases, the paintings seem like experiments in color mixing that might later inform his studio work done over the winter months. By the late 1980s, he focused on large landscape paintings, in which grass, floweras and trees become an all over design—a space where his idea of what is a landscape could be expanded. Above left: Rose Bud, 1967

The Guggenheim’s architecture, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is notoriously unfriendly to any but the most articulate and accomplished works. In this case, the structural columns that serve as short walls enclosing each bay, are often used to present the many quick wet-into-wet studies Katz was accustomed to making, along with drawings and prints associated with the large works that hold their own in this formidable space. Daylight filtering through the etched glass windows further illuminates the shimmering paint quality that is Katz’s alone. This show is surely best seen daytimes. Photo abpve courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Along the way up the ramp, we see the figures and landscapes becoming larger, simplified, and cropped to expose an elemental idea of the subject’s essence: flowers delineated with simplified forms based on keen observations; groups of friends sitting on a beach having a picnic against a landscape defined by a few simple shapes and the emblematic colors of the seaside (Round Hill, 1977, above, courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum); a close view, painted on a four-foot-high canvas, of Ada’s Black Sandals, 1987; the top floor of a Hopper-esque brick building with the graphic form of a high-rise behind (Comice, 1997);

Gathering concludes in a white box side gallery with a group of monumental paintings made between 1919 and 1922 that serve as a catalogue of the themes Katz has returned to time after time. For Ada watchers, the first wall offers a view from behind of her dark hair, now silvered by age, above her typical black attire. Pared down to the essentials, it evokes a figure from the Parthenon perceived through squinted eyes, and sets the tone for the abstracted monochrome figures and landscapes in the gallery. Above: Yellow Tree 1, 1919, courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 

Alex Katz Gatherings continues at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum through February 20, 2023 and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. 
In addition to Works and Process, a performance series taking place at the Guggenheim and in part, at Lincoln Center Info, there is a series of digital productions that complement the retrospective, including a newly captured and intimate video portrait of the artist at work, and more. Info Photos by @peggy.roalf except as noted