Alex Katz
(born in Brooklyn/New York 1927)
Man in Canoe, 1974, signed and dated Alex Katz 74; again signed on the reverse, oil on hardboard, 40 x 41 cm, framed
Provenance:
Robert Miller Gallery, New York (label)
Collection Paul Jacques Schupf, New York
Burkhard Eikelmann Galerie, Düsseldorf
Private Collection North Rhine-Westphalia
Exhibited:
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas; Alex Katz: Small Paintings, April 2001 - June 2002, exhib. cat. Kansas City 2001, p. 82 with col.-ill. (label)
Alex Katz’s ‘Man in Canoe’ commands the viewer’s attention with bold brushstrokes of brilliant azure blue and exemplifies the artist’s distinctive stylisation and highly individual aesthetic, which has left a lasting mark on contemporary figurative painting. Executed in 1974, the work belongs to the ‘Small Paintings’, a series that has been the subject of entire books and exhibitions. It preceded the related monumental painting ‘Canoe with Figure’ of the same year and is characteristic of Katz’s long-standing engagement with the tranquil scenes of Maine – the place where his passion for painting first took root and to which he has returned every summer with his wife Ada.
Early in Alex Katz’s career, the term ‘Small Paintings’ simply denoted works of comparatively modest dimensions. Until 1962/63, almost all his paintings existed in a single, definitive format, which might be large or small depending on the circumstances. Each work was the direct outcome of one or more painting sessions. Around 1962, Katz departed from this approach by beginning to produce small-scale oil studies in preparation for the final paintings.
‘Man in Canoe’ evokes a gentle sense of nostalgia in its depiction of this blissful, introspective moment. More fundamentally, however, the work suggests that our relationship with the world admits no essential distinction between the natural and the social: they are simply two aspects of the same reality. In this respect, Merlin James’s observation concerning Katz’s group paintings might equally be applied to even his smallest landscapes: ‘The painting actively engages with the artificiality, the fiction of the human world, in which people “behave naturally”, where even the casual … has always already been arranged, staged.’ For Katz, however, the point is not to pass judgement on artifice – a branch of an apple tree in New York is as ‘natural’ as a branch of a maple in Maine, or a couple in a loft – but rather to present each viewer with a model for relating to the world. Rousseau’s reflections on nature (and society) might be applied almost verbatim to Katz’s paintings, provided that ‘nature’ is understood to encompass not only the ‘wild nature’ emphasised by Rousseau, but also the human world: ‘Imagine an ideal world, similar to our own and yet entirely different.
Nature there is the same as on our earth, but its power is more keenly felt, its order more apparent, its aspect more admirable. Its forms are more elegant, its colours more brilliant, its scents sweeter, all things more engaging. Nature as a whole is so beautiful there that contemplating it, filling the soul with love for so moving a spectacle, inspires both the desire to contribute to this beautiful system and the fear of disturbing its harmony.’
(Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, vol. I, p. 9)
Specialist: Dr. Petra Maria Schäpers
(born in Brooklyn/New York 1927)
Man in Canoe, 1974, signed and dated Alex Katz 74; again signed on the reverse, oil on hardboard, 40 x 41 cm, framed
Provenance:
Robert Miller Gallery, New York (label)
Collection Paul Jacques Schupf, New York
Burkhard Eikelmann Galerie, Düsseldorf
Private Collection North Rhine-Westphalia
Exhibited:
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas; Alex Katz: Small Paintings, April 2001 - June 2002, exhib. cat. Kansas City 2001, p. 82 with col.-ill. (label)
Alex Katz’s ‘Man in Canoe’ commands the viewer’s attention with bold brushstrokes of brilliant azure blue and exemplifies the artist’s distinctive stylisation and highly individual aesthetic, which has left a lasting mark on contemporary figurative painting. Executed in 1974, the work belongs to the ‘Small Paintings’, a series that has been the subject of entire books and exhibitions. It preceded the related monumental painting ‘Canoe with Figure’ of the same year and is characteristic of Katz’s long-standing engagement with the tranquil scenes of Maine – the place where his passion for painting first took root and to which he has returned every summer with his wife Ada.
Early in Alex Katz’s career, the term ‘Small Paintings’ simply denoted works of comparatively modest dimensions. Until 1962/63, almost all his paintings existed in a single, definitive format, which might be large or small depending on the circumstances. Each work was the direct outcome of one or more painting sessions. Around 1962, Katz departed from this approach by beginning to produce small-scale oil studies in preparation for the final paintings.
‘Man in Canoe’ evokes a gentle sense of nostalgia in its depiction of this blissful, introspective moment. More fundamentally, however, the work suggests that our relationship with the world admits no essential distinction between the natural and the social: they are simply two aspects of the same reality. In this respect, Merlin James’s observation concerning Katz’s group paintings might equally be applied to even his smallest landscapes: ‘The painting actively engages with the artificiality, the fiction of the human world, in which people “behave naturally”, where even the casual … has always already been arranged, staged.’ For Katz, however, the point is not to pass judgement on artifice – a branch of an apple tree in New York is as ‘natural’ as a branch of a maple in Maine, or a couple in a loft – but rather to present each viewer with a model for relating to the world. Rousseau’s reflections on nature (and society) might be applied almost verbatim to Katz’s paintings, provided that ‘nature’ is understood to encompass not only the ‘wild nature’ emphasised by Rousseau, but also the human world: ‘Imagine an ideal world, similar to our own and yet entirely different.
Nature there is the same as on our earth, but its power is more keenly felt, its order more apparent, its aspect more admirable. Its forms are more elegant, its colours more brilliant, its scents sweeter, all things more engaging. Nature as a whole is so beautiful there that contemplating it, filling the soul with love for so moving a spectacle, inspires both the desire to contribute to this beautiful system and the fear of disturbing its harmony.’
(Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, vol. I, p. 9)
Specialist: Dr. Petra Maria Schäpers
