Here's a whole article on Katz: "Alex Katz Is Still Perfecting His Craft/The artist has had an astonishingly long career. Now 95, he is preparing for another major retrospective" by Amanda Fortini (NYT).
His paintings neglect to propound a narrative, a concept or a political message, embodying an approach that’s also not very popular right now, when artwork is often reduced to a “message-delivery system,”... rather than viewed as the site of a mysterious aesthetic encounter between artist and audience....
Katz has often said that he aspires to paint “in the present tense,” meaning not only that he paints with some speed, attempting to capture a transient moment, but also that the immediacy of his approach will translate to a similar feeling in the painting....
Does he think about the future? He chuckles at the question. “I try not to,” he says. “I try to stay alive today.”
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His paintings neglect to propound a narrative, a concept or a political message, embodying an approach that’s also not very popular right now, when artwork is often reduced to a “message-delivery system,”... rather than viewed as the site of a mysterious aesthetic encounter between artist and audience....
Say what? My guess is this is an attempt to be critical of Katz for the lack of contemporary leftie politics in his work, while not piling on a 95 year old man…
I confess I'm not familiar with Alex Katz. But...what a neat man. Interesting influences, interesting style. I love how sharp he is at his age (would that I were as sharp today). As I dig more into his art, I love it. What a unique style.
I agree with this man.
"I don’t know if it makes any sense"
Perhaps it's an expression of false modesty, and avoiding message-delivery is fine, but if he doesn't know, how can I? What's the sense in appearance with no meaning? What's the sense in striving for a sense-less aesthetic experience?
I always disliked Katz's work. However, as I look at the work shown in the article, and in quickly looking at images of his paintings online, I find that I do not dislike it so much--not at all, actually--and a good bit of it is even appealing to me. Just goes to show...it sometimes takes a long time to really "see" art that appears so simple and easy to dismiss the first many times one looks at it.
He's no Picasso, but God bless him for still painting...
Life brings you gifts sometimes. Thanks for this video, what an interesting man.
" Joe Smith said...
He's no Picasso..."
You say that like it's a bad thing.
"What's the sense in appearance with no meaning?"
Why do we like sunsets? It's beautiful, it strikes us with colors and shapes of clouds and background, but it doesn't really have meaning. It's just the earth turning so that our nearest star drops below the horizon, happens every single day for billions of years.
Yet... it has an impact.
I'm not taken with Katz's work, but there really is something to art that bypasses our intellectual attempts at finding meaning and has a more direct emotional impact. That we tend to have trained ourselves out of this, to try to find rational meaning in everything, is part of the problem of the Modern world.
That said, while I can find this in some artists (I'll admit a fondness for Kandinsky), it sure seems to me that Katz is actually doing the thing he says he's not doing. He seems to have ridden that 20th century wave where the art itself is pedestrian but the artist is raised as brilliant because of their ability to speak about their work in often dense and allusive ways that describes their whole purpose and meaning as not having purpose or meaning, purporting to living in the moment but always referential and attuned to the fashions of contemporary art discussions.
Nice piece.
I like his flat style.
I have that slide projector in the garage.
Pretty pictures, but how much is really there? Isn't something missing?
To add... would someone look at Katz's work completely without context or background of the artist and have a substantive sensory experience? Or does such sensory experiences require knowledge of the artist and artist's verbose description in order to evoke a rationally mandated Emotion?
Is the art the art itself, carrying its own sensory meaning on its own, or is the true art the little card next to the "art" that describes the art that is the real art in our era?
A person can literally do anything, and if they can describe it well and have ridden the artistic fashion wave, they provoke aficionados' rationality that purport to be senses. In this way, it's more transemotional impact than genuinely transformative experience in the presence of art that needs no further analysis.
We don't need someone to tell us a sunset is beautiful or have a docent tell us what the colors and influences are. A sunset simply is. And that's not only enough, it fills the soul and orients us toward a sense of beauty in this world that resonates deep within.
Oops, posted in the wrong thread... here's the right one.
One of my favorite art subplots, and artistic awakening, in recent television.
From Parks and Recreation:
Tom loves art
'You say that like it's a bad thing.'
His stuff seems pretty bland.
Like Picasso or hate him, he was innovative and original.
And when he wanted to, he could paint his ass off...
Oh No! I can look at his head and see his skull thru the skin!
Pretty pictures, but how much is really there? Isn't something missing?
To observe things without assigning meaning to them or placing them in a narrative, this would be a peaceful way to live. His art reminds me a bit of Edward Hopper, only more cheerful.
Here's a comment that came in the email from a longtime reader who had trouble getting Blogger to accept the comment (which I know sometimes happens (and is happening to me this morning!)):
"Paddy O: There is an extremely entertaining book about the Inklings group at Oxford University in England (The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams by Philip and Carol Zaleski) that, among a LOT of other things, illustrates over time the switch in scholarship from the piece of art itself to the domain of the critic, where the imprimatur shifted from the art to the intellectual blathering, excuse me, insight. (Though I fully admit that a lot of analysis is valuable.)
(It’s the kind of book where you reread some sentences immediately just because they’re so insightful or amusing or sheer good writing.)
So, Paddy O, I thoroughly enjoyed your comments above.
Joe Smith: And as for the exchange about Picasso above, I thought the same thing—HUH?? Picasso?? and then, when I followed the link, I was stunned!
“That’s damn good work!” sez I, quickly flipping my spontaneous insults aside in chagrin. :o)
((After centuries of reading Althouse—a possible exaggeration, but certainly a lot Before Meade—I have decided to get a Google account to comment here and elsewhere, but to which I appended np other information. *SIGH*!))"
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