Alex Katz

Alex Katz presents a series of seven paintings of a couple: A man and woman in theatrical stylized relationship to each other, as though in a dance or on the stage. Katz has a long history making sets and stage design with the Paul Taylor Dance Company and many others. The formality of human relations, particularly as it is played out on screen or stage, is evident in the ‘social’ pictures he has made through this life. In recent years accessories and adornments have fallen away leaving the stark visage of the human face, floating outside of time and context. In these new paintings both protagonists wear bold and colorful stage make up that evokes the desperation and beauty of the Weimar years in Germany, while their alienated distance from each other embodies the very contemporary visceral anxiety involved in actual physical proximity. With a decisive clear hand and an economic palette of purple, black, green and red Katz gets straight to the point, revealing this new age of alienation, in which grief and loss, desire and longing, are as vividly present as ever.