Alex Katz as an Outstanding Representative of the American Pop Art

The Pop Art movement is notably known for its ability to transform ordinary leisure and the mundane into an awareness of amusement, criticism, and irony. Stylistically characterized for its use of bold colors, shapes, and sizes its lasting influence is still reflected within current artists' practice. This is evident through the comparison of American figurative artist Alex Katz with the likes of current contemporary practitioner Gary Hume of whom both reflect a similar use of tapping 'into the rich seam of images that fill our everyday lives.'(Kunsthalle Bern 1995, p. 62). Although the contemporary bracket is far more diverse and ever-changing, pops slightly restricting bright colors and juxtapositions still make a way in this 'new' and contemporary world. Practices between these two artists are unique in themselves but share similarities and differences, some effectively discernible and numerous hidden.

Alex Katz is viewed as one of significance within art history, during a period which was predominated by Abstract Expressionists like Pollock and De Kooning. Katz rejected the “anxiety of Influence” in favor of “the new perceptual realism”(New York, Harper & Row, 1988), creating with brilliance and expressive power an answer for the problem among abstraction and realism. This was by giving primacy to style over the subject matter, creating realism in all its new forms. Katz dabbled within a number of artistic tendencies, such as color field painting, pop, and realism. Yet he managed to fashion images that are unmistakably, permanently his own.

Katz’s art can be considered to be quick and cool, as his work draws attention due to its immediacy and immaculate composition. His practice is distinguishable from his large formats and simple reductions of the figure. From this image, it is easy to see that Katz’s portraits are quite clearly just that, a portrait. Which is deemed from the outset, Katz creates the figure with nothing else in mind just pure material to surface. This way of creating is something I would say is one of a kind to Katz and what makes his works of art so effective. This approach beyond many has allowed Katz to create his own style, yet embodied beneath his simple portraiture can be a deeper unintentional meaning, he says “I’m primarily interested in the ways things appear, and if you get the appearance right, I think other things come into it’ (Sam Hunter 1992, p. 26).

His famous artistic work is a piece created by Katz in 1963, named ‘The Red Smile’. It exemplifies Katz’s highly polished, developed method where there is little hint of the work’s creation. His pop style is immediate within this piece, depicting a profile of his wife Ada’s face. It lays against a smooth red background only bearing the features of his wife’s face, the colors and scale become important when analyzing the effect of this painting. ‘The Red Smile’ is nearly 7x10 feet, and is one of his largest portraits to date. The composition resembles a billboard or a wide cinema screen influenced by the mass.