"Does the painting I've spent my whole life creating mean that people will recognize my worth in the future?" Go to your mother's future, I'm dead is dead. Why care about things I wouldn't know? Besides, I'm going to die soon. —Alex, 86."
"Alex Katz was born in New York, USA, and his works are mainly landscapes and portraits, with simple compositions, vivid color contrasts, a large flat color field and a perfect combination of skilled techniques, and is regarded as a pioneer of pop art. Having held numerous solo exhibitions around the world, it has had a huge impact on the younger generation of artists."
"Katz was born into a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, to a poetry-loving actor whose father lost his factory during the October Revolution. In the early days of the Great Depression, his family moved to St Albans, Queens, an arts-diverse suburb where his parents' interest in art also prompted Katz to embark on the path of art. In 1946, Katz was admitted to the prestigious school in New York, the Cooper Union School of Art, and later to the Skohegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. In the meantime, Katz's paintings began to take shape."
"While New York was indulging in the grandeur of Abstract Expressionism in America and the pop elements of pop art, Katz was far removed from that force. He does not seem to pay attention to the revolution and innovation of art, but instead plays the role of a good painter, focusing his eyes on his own life, his family and friends become his models, and the scenery and scenery he encounters every day become the world on canvas."
"During his first decade as a painter, he destroyed more than a thousand paintings in order to find his style. In the 1950s, when Abstract Expressionism dominated the American art scene, he was more concerned with finding a freer way to visually present painting, "I don't want to paint what has already appeared." As for the subject matter, I don't like narrative, which is the most basic. ”」
"In his depictions of social figures he is familiar with, he uses beautiful, stylish character compositions, attention to detail, simplicity, vivid color contrasts, a large flat color field and skilled techniques that combine perfectly, without narrative and plot. He admired the simple and bright large color blocks of Picasso and Matisse, and the style of those works became the main expression of his paintings."
"At the same time he absorbed the anti-abstraction of Pop Art and the practice of getting rid of the depth of field and removing the background. He considers himself a simple and analytical painter, drawing with his subconscious and intuition, and letting people know the world through painting. His character arrangement is often unconventional and depicts the same image multiple times in a painting. His paintings have always been published in easy-to-understand, novel images."
"The subject matter of the painting is not Katz's concern, it is only the object being depicted. For the masterpieces of the masters of the past, he was very concerned about absorbing the way they painted. The Japanese ukiyo-e painter Kitagawa Kazumachi was an important source of inspiration for him, as well as other artistic disciplines: music, film, poetry and dance were Katz's focus. Moreover, for Katz, when an artist does his best, he cannot interpret his paintings, but depends on others telling him."
"And he himself can learn a lot from the criticism of others, including his friends, dealers and professional critics." He believes that painting is in a sense the result of everyone's efforts, and professional criticism itself is an artistic inspiration. There have been criticisms that Katz's work only floats on the surface, but Katz has always believed that the surface also has depth, "Painting must strive to capture the most mysterious things, and the most mysterious is the appearance""
Katz was quite "free" when he created paintings, and he tried to make the act of painting itself faster than the idea when painting. On the understanding of freedom, he said: "Freedom in the 1950s was to be freed from the influence of Picasso and Matisse, to paint in an open way, like Pollock'; now it has become to depict unconsciously, when painting a big tree, the paint enters the canvas faster than before the idea, that is freedom." “」
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