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Lot Essay
"Pop art deals with signs, while my work deals with symbols. Pop art is cynical and ironic. My work is not. Those are big differences. Pop art is modern. My work is traditional." - Alex Katz
Combining his most recognizable subject with a consummate understanding of art history, Red Band is a definitive example of Alex Katz’s mature work. Exhibiting masterful handling of color, light, and surface, the monumental portrait delivers an intimate tableau in the artist’s signature style. Known for his flat compositions and highly graphic approach to figuration, Katz has established himself as one of the great American portraitists. The artist’s importance in the history of figurative painting cannot be overstated. Originally influenced by billboard advertisements and their use of bold swaths of color for their immediate visual appeal, he did not align with the fledgling Pop Art movement when he began painting. “Pop art deals with signs, while my work deals with symbols. Pop art is cynical and ironic. My work is not. Those are big differences. Pop art is modern. My work is traditional” (A. Katz, quoted in “Alex Katz Interviewed by David Salle,” in Alex Katz: Unfamiliar Images, Milan 2002, p. 16). Working within an evolution of more conventional portraiture, Katz has pushed figural depictions into a new age.
Rendered on a rich goldenrod ground, Katz paints a close-up portrait of a woman wearing an audacious white hat. Sporting the titular red band wrapped around its crown, the headpiece elongates its wearer’s head to towering proportions while the brim flops over her face. The sitter, her hand resting on her chin, stares out of frame with one auburn eye, the other hidden by her head covering. Her skin sports a golden tan and her light pink lips accent the highlights around the edges of the face, serving to separate the subject from the color field in the background. She wears a simple white blouse with long sleeves buttoned at the wrist in a shade that echoes that of her hat. A shock of neatly cascading brown hair with a single lock of cloudy gray is cut at shoulder length and ends in a line of feathery brushstrokes. In the lower right corner, what appears to be the back of a yellow chair is visible. This dynamic cropping of the scene is pivotal to Katz’s investigation of figures in space and often gives the impression that we are viewing renditions of close-up photographs or single frames from a film. His insistence on painting everyday subjects further emphasizes this feeling as the flat color of the background often gives the impression of cut-out images used for collage.
Red Band utilizes two leitmotifs, one personal and one historical. The first is synonymous with Katz’s decades-long career, the portrait of his wife and muse, Ada. Since their marriage in 1958, she has been the central figure in his life and work. Viewing Katz’s work is to see his muse age with him in an intimate dialogue between two people shared with the world through painting. The second motif draws upon art historical tropes to establish a conversation with those that came before. The femme au chapeau has been used by many figurative artists like Pablo Picasso and leverages the delicate visages of women with elaborate feats of millinery. “I’ve always been interested in fashion”, Katz noted in 2009, “because it’s ephemeral” (A. Katz, quoted in C. McGuigan, “Alex Katz is Cooler than Eve,” Smithsonian Magazine, August 2009). Combining elaborate headgear with his signature handling of flat color and stylized figures, Red Band is as much about the sitter as it is about her stylish accouterment.
"I’ve always been interested in fashion because it’s ephemeral." - Alex Katz
Katz has long been noted for his immaculate control of flat planes of color and stylized versions of his sitters. Working at the same scale as his colleagues entrenched in Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Abstraction, he turned toward a minimalist style early on that still prioritized the flatness of the canvas yet fully embraced descriptive figuration. Not beholden to abstract gestural painting like some of his contemporaries, the artist looked toward establishing a palpable link between the subject and the audience. Red Band accomplishes this through close cropping and an immediacy that alludes to the closeness of the artist and his muse. “Katz’s portraits are true to the way we experience others,” Donald Kuspit explained. “They eloquently convey the tension between the determinate outer appearance and the indeterminate inner reality of someone known only from the outside. Katz seems to make the shell of a person’s outer reality his or her complete substance, as though the person had no inner substance. Yet the quirkiness of Katz’s appearances alludes to that inner substance […] For all their everydayness, Katz’s figures have an air of transient strangeness to them, suggesting the mystery of their inner existence, perhaps even to themselves” (D. Kuspit, Alex Katz: Night Paintings, New York, 1991, p. 8). By creating an energetic duality between his planar style and the emotional content of each work, Katz establishes a mysterious relationship between himself, his subject, and his audience.
Though initially influenced by Jackson Pollock and the abstract figuration of other New York School luminaries, Katz rejected the insistence on chance and chaos of the late 1950s and began to paint portraits of ordinary people. By adhering to a smooth, objective style, he prefigured the investigations of Pop artists in the next decade. Paying homage to the oeuvres of Cezanne, Bonnard, and Matisse, Katz pulled from everyday life instead of any overt sense of inner turmoil. Matisse in particular was influential, and his collage works helped to inform works like Red Band where the figure has been completely extracted from their surroundings and placed upon an unbroken ground. “I think of myself as a modern person and I want my painting to look that way,” he once admitted. “I think of my paintings as different from some others in that they derive a lot from modern paintings as well as from older paintings…They’re traditional because all painting belongs to the paintings before them, and they’re modernistic because they’re responsive to the immediate” (A. Katz, quoted in R. Marshall, Alex Katz, New York, 1986, p. 22). Floating amidst a variety of competing modes and ideas, Katz established a singularly individual style that continues to enchant audiences the world over.
Combining his most recognizable subject with a consummate understanding of art history, Red Band is a definitive example of Alex Katz’s mature work. Exhibiting masterful handling of color, light, and surface, the monumental portrait delivers an intimate tableau in the artist’s signature style. Known for his flat compositions and highly graphic approach to figuration, Katz has established himself as one of the great American portraitists. The artist’s importance in the history of figurative painting cannot be overstated. Originally influenced by billboard advertisements and their use of bold swaths of color for their immediate visual appeal, he did not align with the fledgling Pop Art movement when he began painting. “Pop art deals with signs, while my work deals with symbols. Pop art is cynical and ironic. My work is not. Those are big differences. Pop art is modern. My work is traditional” (A. Katz, quoted in “Alex Katz Interviewed by David Salle,” in Alex Katz: Unfamiliar Images, Milan 2002, p. 16). Working within an evolution of more conventional portraiture, Katz has pushed figural depictions into a new age.
Rendered on a rich goldenrod ground, Katz paints a close-up portrait of a woman wearing an audacious white hat. Sporting the titular red band wrapped around its crown, the headpiece elongates its wearer’s head to towering proportions while the brim flops over her face. The sitter, her hand resting on her chin, stares out of frame with one auburn eye, the other hidden by her head covering. Her skin sports a golden tan and her light pink lips accent the highlights around the edges of the face, serving to separate the subject from the color field in the background. She wears a simple white blouse with long sleeves buttoned at the wrist in a shade that echoes that of her hat. A shock of neatly cascading brown hair with a single lock of cloudy gray is cut at shoulder length and ends in a line of feathery brushstrokes. In the lower right corner, what appears to be the back of a yellow chair is visible. This dynamic cropping of the scene is pivotal to Katz’s investigation of figures in space and often gives the impression that we are viewing renditions of close-up photographs or single frames from a film. His insistence on painting everyday subjects further emphasizes this feeling as the flat color of the background often gives the impression of cut-out images used for collage.
Red Band utilizes two leitmotifs, one personal and one historical. The first is synonymous with Katz’s decades-long career, the portrait of his wife and muse, Ada. Since their marriage in 1958, she has been the central figure in his life and work. Viewing Katz’s work is to see his muse age with him in an intimate dialogue between two people shared with the world through painting. The second motif draws upon art historical tropes to establish a conversation with those that came before. The femme au chapeau has been used by many figurative artists like Pablo Picasso and leverages the delicate visages of women with elaborate feats of millinery. “I’ve always been interested in fashion”, Katz noted in 2009, “because it’s ephemeral” (A. Katz, quoted in C. McGuigan, “Alex Katz is Cooler than Eve,” Smithsonian Magazine, August 2009). Combining elaborate headgear with his signature handling of flat color and stylized figures, Red Band is as much about the sitter as it is about her stylish accouterment.
"I’ve always been interested in fashion because it’s ephemeral." - Alex Katz
Katz has long been noted for his immaculate control of flat planes of color and stylized versions of his sitters. Working at the same scale as his colleagues entrenched in Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Abstraction, he turned toward a minimalist style early on that still prioritized the flatness of the canvas yet fully embraced descriptive figuration. Not beholden to abstract gestural painting like some of his contemporaries, the artist looked toward establishing a palpable link between the subject and the audience. Red Band accomplishes this through close cropping and an immediacy that alludes to the closeness of the artist and his muse. “Katz’s portraits are true to the way we experience others,” Donald Kuspit explained. “They eloquently convey the tension between the determinate outer appearance and the indeterminate inner reality of someone known only from the outside. Katz seems to make the shell of a person’s outer reality his or her complete substance, as though the person had no inner substance. Yet the quirkiness of Katz’s appearances alludes to that inner substance […] For all their everydayness, Katz’s figures have an air of transient strangeness to them, suggesting the mystery of their inner existence, perhaps even to themselves” (D. Kuspit, Alex Katz: Night Paintings, New York, 1991, p. 8). By creating an energetic duality between his planar style and the emotional content of each work, Katz establishes a mysterious relationship between himself, his subject, and his audience.
Though initially influenced by Jackson Pollock and the abstract figuration of other New York School luminaries, Katz rejected the insistence on chance and chaos of the late 1950s and began to paint portraits of ordinary people. By adhering to a smooth, objective style, he prefigured the investigations of Pop artists in the next decade. Paying homage to the oeuvres of Cezanne, Bonnard, and Matisse, Katz pulled from everyday life instead of any overt sense of inner turmoil. Matisse in particular was influential, and his collage works helped to inform works like Red Band where the figure has been completely extracted from their surroundings and placed upon an unbroken ground. “I think of myself as a modern person and I want my painting to look that way,” he once admitted. “I think of my paintings as different from some others in that they derive a lot from modern paintings as well as from older paintings…They’re traditional because all painting belongs to the paintings before them, and they’re modernistic because they’re responsive to the immediate” (A. Katz, quoted in R. Marshall, Alex Katz, New York, 1986, p. 22). Floating amidst a variety of competing modes and ideas, Katz established a singularly individual style that continues to enchant audiences the world over.