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Lot Essay
‘Light is the initial flash of what you see; that’s what I’m after. People ask me about the colours, but the colours are irrelevant. I can change the colours as long as I’ve got the light. People think that my colours are really specific but they’re not because I’m looking for an overall light.’
– Alex Katz
Alex Katz’s painting Dusk, 1986, enraptures the viewer with a domestic interior scene inhabited by a female nude. The striking woman is situated at the forefront of the picture plane: composed of flat, bold forms, she appears to almost enter the viewer’s domain; in turn, we become placed in the position of her expectant lover. At once familiar yet distant, the painting is characterised by a sense of detached tranquillity, so typical of Katz’s style. Described by critic David Sylvester as ‘serenely impersonal and impassive,’ Katz’s reductive approach to painting is unparalleled in its evocative simplicity (D. Sylvester, ed., Alex Katz: Twenty Five Years of Painting, exh. cat., Saatchi Gallery, London, 1997, p. 13). The starry-eyed protagonist gazes out towards the viewer in this work, with an air of unpretentious, easy charm. Her left arm extends beyond the picture frame, as the right curls loosely about her shoulder, her fingers absent-mindedly wrapped around a glass of wine.
As an artist, Katz is deeply concerned with capturing the present moment – of embedding a sense of ‘now-ness’ within his painted surfaces. This he achieves through his focused attention on light: ‘It’s the instantaneous light,’ he has explained, ‘If you get it right then you get it in the total present tense – that’s what you’re going for, that’s eternity’ (A. Katz, quoted in ‘Alex Katz: Quick Light’, The Serpentine Gallery, London, 2016, https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/ sites/default/files/press-releases/ alex_katz_press_release_final_0.pdf [accessed 4th January 2018). Indeed Dusk, as its title implies, illustrates the darkest stage of twilight, transfixing in paint that enchanted moment when the blackness of night begins its descent. In this work, light and shadow dance across the female subject’s supple skin, illuminating slivers of her face and back in an ethereal glow. The nude is a subject matter less frequently explored in Katz’s extensive oeuvre: he has described the ‘topless girl’ as ‘a more generalized time-frame … [that] could be of any time’ (Interview with the artist and D. Sylvester, March 1997). Nevertheless, in this stylised work, the woman’s short-cropped hair and white headband eloquently root her in her contemporary moment.
– Alex Katz
Alex Katz’s painting Dusk, 1986, enraptures the viewer with a domestic interior scene inhabited by a female nude. The striking woman is situated at the forefront of the picture plane: composed of flat, bold forms, she appears to almost enter the viewer’s domain; in turn, we become placed in the position of her expectant lover. At once familiar yet distant, the painting is characterised by a sense of detached tranquillity, so typical of Katz’s style. Described by critic David Sylvester as ‘serenely impersonal and impassive,’ Katz’s reductive approach to painting is unparalleled in its evocative simplicity (D. Sylvester, ed., Alex Katz: Twenty Five Years of Painting, exh. cat., Saatchi Gallery, London, 1997, p. 13). The starry-eyed protagonist gazes out towards the viewer in this work, with an air of unpretentious, easy charm. Her left arm extends beyond the picture frame, as the right curls loosely about her shoulder, her fingers absent-mindedly wrapped around a glass of wine.
As an artist, Katz is deeply concerned with capturing the present moment – of embedding a sense of ‘now-ness’ within his painted surfaces. This he achieves through his focused attention on light: ‘It’s the instantaneous light,’ he has explained, ‘If you get it right then you get it in the total present tense – that’s what you’re going for, that’s eternity’ (A. Katz, quoted in ‘Alex Katz: Quick Light’, The Serpentine Gallery, London, 2016, https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/ sites/default/files/press-releases/ alex_katz_press_release_final_0.pdf [accessed 4th January 2018). Indeed Dusk, as its title implies, illustrates the darkest stage of twilight, transfixing in paint that enchanted moment when the blackness of night begins its descent. In this work, light and shadow dance across the female subject’s supple skin, illuminating slivers of her face and back in an ethereal glow. The nude is a subject matter less frequently explored in Katz’s extensive oeuvre: he has described the ‘topless girl’ as ‘a more generalized time-frame … [that] could be of any time’ (Interview with the artist and D. Sylvester, March 1997). Nevertheless, in this stylised work, the woman’s short-cropped hair and white headband eloquently root her in her contemporary moment.