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拍品专文
Untitled is an understated depiction of family that illustrates Katz’s affinity for the nuanced balance of color and form, while highlighting a more intimate, invitational mode of viewing. As opposed to his later paintings of monumental scale that draw comparisons to the cinema screen, in the present lot, Katz demonstrates a similar ability to powerfully, yet delicately, create dynamic scenery but through a intimate simplicity.
The present lot serves as a portal into the Katz family’s daily life. Here, Katz revisits his favorite subject: his wife, Ada, whom he has depicted more than two hundred times since first meeting her in 1957, as well as their son, Vincent, who rests upon her lap. The inscrutable Ada gazes out to the beholder, as though she were expecting them, and after years of posing for her husband, maybe she had been. Many portraits of Ada from this period emphasize a similar ambiguous, stoic expression, capturing the viewer through her eyes, which invite us entry into the family’s interior world.
The artist’s concise visual vocabulary renders Ada in a few broad strokes, distinguishing her through her coiffed bob curls that fall just beneath her chin, framing her pale visage. Vincent joins his mother, sitting against muted washes of blues, greys, and greens. Their surroundings are sparingly articulated, fastening the eye to the mother and son. While Ada stares out to the view, Vincent looks off to the side with his arms thrust behind him, as if he is eager to break free from his mother’s embrace and explore.
The two subjects are anchored by a doubled framing, inscribed by a circle against a flat, grey background, and again by the square edges of the canvas. The compositional rigor of the scene places the pair strikingly on view, as though they were enclosed by a spherical camera lens. A few of Katz’s paintings from this distinguished early period feature a similar framing; among them, the 1959 Ada (Oval), gifted by the artist to the Whitney Museum of American Art. The obliqueness of the geometric background encircling the subject makes the model all the more arresting, removed from spatial context and transposed onto a flat plane. The geometric framing against the flat background anticipates further developments in Katz’s style of figuration – one that is ever-evolving.
This early homage to Ada and Vincent displays this exact exploratory inclination and the artist’s strong interest in molding portraiture through dynamic form. Perhaps most importantly, Untitled is a loving display of the artist’s family and inner life, a timeless subject that has remained a constant for the artist despite changes in style or appearance to his painterly language.
Spanning more than eight decades, Katz’s artistic production transcends contemporaneous artistic movements. Breaking into the New York art scene in the 1950s during the rise of New York School gestural abstraction, Katz’s oeuvre parallels Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art movements without remaining indebted to them. The artist’s sustained interest in the aesthetics of popular culture refashions an iconography of the everyday subject. Born in Brooklyn in 1927, Katz studied at The Cooper Union and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His body of work focuses largely on figuration, and among his most coveted works are his portraits of Ada, his enduring model and muse.
The present lot serves as a portal into the Katz family’s daily life. Here, Katz revisits his favorite subject: his wife, Ada, whom he has depicted more than two hundred times since first meeting her in 1957, as well as their son, Vincent, who rests upon her lap. The inscrutable Ada gazes out to the beholder, as though she were expecting them, and after years of posing for her husband, maybe she had been. Many portraits of Ada from this period emphasize a similar ambiguous, stoic expression, capturing the viewer through her eyes, which invite us entry into the family’s interior world.
The artist’s concise visual vocabulary renders Ada in a few broad strokes, distinguishing her through her coiffed bob curls that fall just beneath her chin, framing her pale visage. Vincent joins his mother, sitting against muted washes of blues, greys, and greens. Their surroundings are sparingly articulated, fastening the eye to the mother and son. While Ada stares out to the view, Vincent looks off to the side with his arms thrust behind him, as if he is eager to break free from his mother’s embrace and explore.
The two subjects are anchored by a doubled framing, inscribed by a circle against a flat, grey background, and again by the square edges of the canvas. The compositional rigor of the scene places the pair strikingly on view, as though they were enclosed by a spherical camera lens. A few of Katz’s paintings from this distinguished early period feature a similar framing; among them, the 1959 Ada (Oval), gifted by the artist to the Whitney Museum of American Art. The obliqueness of the geometric background encircling the subject makes the model all the more arresting, removed from spatial context and transposed onto a flat plane. The geometric framing against the flat background anticipates further developments in Katz’s style of figuration – one that is ever-evolving.
This early homage to Ada and Vincent displays this exact exploratory inclination and the artist’s strong interest in molding portraiture through dynamic form. Perhaps most importantly, Untitled is a loving display of the artist’s family and inner life, a timeless subject that has remained a constant for the artist despite changes in style or appearance to his painterly language.
Spanning more than eight decades, Katz’s artistic production transcends contemporaneous artistic movements. Breaking into the New York art scene in the 1950s during the rise of New York School gestural abstraction, Katz’s oeuvre parallels Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art movements without remaining indebted to them. The artist’s sustained interest in the aesthetics of popular culture refashions an iconography of the everyday subject. Born in Brooklyn in 1927, Katz studied at The Cooper Union and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His body of work focuses largely on figuration, and among his most coveted works are his portraits of Ada, his enduring model and muse.