Risk taker
John McEwen
Alex Katz
Timothy Taylor Gallery, 24 Dering Street, London WI, until 10 July
rr he American painter Alex Katz is that 1 rarity in any field a youthful 75, he is a master in his prime. At Timothy Taylor he has ten new paintings on view and another beauty that can be seen on request.
The paintings divide evenly between
landscapes and portraits; but the portraits also have a bright feeling of the outdoors. Katz's painting declares itself American in its generous scale and the cinematic debt it owes to the cropped enlargements and neat shorthand of billboards. He is sometimes categorised as a Pop painter, which he is not. Consumerism is not the point.
As all art comes from art, with Katz one should also recognise the influence of ancient Egypt in the bold definition of the faces; of the stylish early 19th-century prints of Utamaro in the way the composition makes such dramatic contact with the edge. Katz even identifies his own bohemian life as an artist with the 'floating world' of pleasurable living Utamaro celebrates. Katz's women, especially Ada, his wife and muse of 50 years, are in his own words 'very high style'.
Katz freezes snapshot moments — family and friends, a fleeting landscape image. But photographs play no part in his method. All his paintings start with a hand-size oil sketch done from life. The principal features are then laboriously enlarged and transferred to the master canvas as a lightly painted drawing. Having made these meticulous preparations he paints the canvas, however large, in one session.
This, he says, suits his impatient temperament but it also helps to retain the energy of the sketch by making him work faster than he can think, which in turn determines the effect of light — because 'light you have to feel, you can't do it cerebrally'. Light for him is the key. 'My drawing anyone can follow and do it better maybe,' he says, tut the light and the brushstrokes — no.'
He paints all kinds of light. The bright sunshine which makes the profiled ear of 'Tiffany' glow a translucent salmon pink; the twilight of 'Berlin', a red-roofed house through wintry trees; 'Two Boats', a cloudy day of flat calm, the sole example of one of his preparatory oil sketches. 'The rule is, if you see it put it in and if it doesn't work take it out.' The 8 x 10 ft `Manoff Woods' kick-starts the show. It is a swarm of green and pink dabs and dashes partially obliterating trunks and branches, Katz has recently allowed himself to be filmed while working. One action-packed sequence shows him adding final touches, planting crucial marks like a graceful boxer picking up points. It shows his debt to Jackson Pollock, who treated the canvas as something of a stage on which to perform.
`Manoff Woods' was done on a grey autumn day, the low light enriching the colour of the turning leaves, 'It's a slow painting. It looks fast but then you start to watch it and it starts to move and I don't think it stops.' Originally '5.30 pm' hung in its stead, which would have struck a more serene chord, See it upstairs. It is a tranquil masterpiece — a beam of light catching a distant yacht in the evening haze.
Most artists rest on their laurels or just run out of ideas. Katz always ups the ante. The older he gets the more risks he takes. You look at those surfaces and marvel how much can be conveyed by so little.
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