Page 54 - World of Art Contemporary Art magazine: The 2023 Guggenheim issue

Emerging as an artist in the mid-20th century, Katz
forged a mode of figurative painting that fused the
energy and distillation of Abstract Expressionist
canvases with the American vernaculars of the
magazine, billboard, and movie screen. He has
turned to his direct surroundings in downtown New
York City and coastal Maine as his primary subject
matter throughout his career, engaging the traditional
painterly subjects of portraiture, genre scenes of
everyday life, and landscape.
The exhibition’s title, Gathering, references the study
of the visible world evoked in the 1951 poem “Salute”
by Katz’s admired friend James Schuyler. Equally, it
summons the notion of a lifetime of work assembled
within the structure of a retrospective, and the
gathering of Katz’s sitters within the uniquely open
space of the rotunda. Whether depicting individuals or Alex Katz, Lake Light, 1992. Oil on linen, 66 1/4 × 78 1/4 in. (168.3 × 198.8 cm).
Sammlung Stiftung Kunst und Natur, Bad Heilbrunn, Germany © 2022 Alex
social groups, Katz’s portraits document an evolving Katz / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photo: Courtesy
community of poets, artists, dancers, musicians, Sammlung Stiftung Kunst und Natur, Bad Heilbrunn, Germany
and critics who have animated a downtown avant-
garde since the midcentury, including Frank O’Hara,
Robert Rauschenberg, Paul Taylor, LeRoi Jones (later
Amiri Baraka), Joe Brainard, Kynaston McShine,
Anne Waldman, John Ashbery, Meredith Monk, Allen
Installation view, Alex Katz: Gathering, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
October 21, 2022–February 20, 2023. Photo: Ariel Ione Williams and Midge Ginsberg, Mariko Mori, Bill T. Jones, and Joan Jonas.
Wattles © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

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