Alex Katz, Looking at Art With Alex Katz (hand signed by Alex Katz), 2018

Alex Katz

Looking at Art With Alex Katz (hand signed by Alex Katz), 2018

Hardback monograph with dust jacket (hand signed in black pen on the title page)

hand signed by Alex Katz in black pen on the title page)

8 1/2 × 6 × 1 inches

Unframed

Provenance
Hand signed by Alex Katz during a special paid event at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, attended by the present owner

This charming hardback monograph with dust jacket was hand signed by Alex Katz during a fascinating paid event at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, attended by the present owner, where Alex Katz discussed his career as well as some of his favorite artists.
This collectible book makes a fantastic gift.

Publisher: Laurence King (1 November 2018)
English; Hardback;‎ 208 pages with color and bw illustrations

Publisher's blurb:
Have you ever dreamt of having your own private museum tour with one of the world’s most-celebrated artists? Take a walk through art history in the company of one of the pre-eminent American painters of our time, Alex Katz.

Describing his personal encounters with the work of over 90 key artists, Katz’s observations offer a fluent, vivid and incisive view, making Looking at Art with Alex Katz the perfect guide both for those looking for an introduction to the world of visual art, and anyone looking for a fresh view on their favorite artist. Includes entries on: Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Paul Cézanne, Leonardo da Vinci, Peter Doig, Alberto Giacometti, Philip Guston, David Hockney, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Edvard Munch, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Rembrandt, Henri Rousseau, Titian, Luc Tuymans, Vincent van Gogh, Johannes Vermeer and more.

Review
[Katz] talks about the work of some 90 artists and a handful of poets with the intimacy and candor you might expect when taking a walk through a museum with a friend. Opinions, observations and insights about artists from every age are delivered with an entertaining directness that makes for an engaging and illuminating experience. Like his paintings, the book offers readily accessible pleasure delivered with brevity and wit that are underpinned by a profound understanding of ideas, techniques and possibilities in the world of art

Artists Magazine
About Alex Katz:
Across eight decades of intense creative production, Alex Katz (b. 1927, Brooklyn, New York) has sought to capture visual experience in the present tense. “Eternity exists in minutes of absolute awareness,” Katz stated in 1961. “Painting, when successful, seems to be a synthetic reflection of this condition.” Whether evoking a glancing exchange between friends or a shaft of light filtered through trees, he has aimed to create a record of “quick things passing,” compressing the flux of everyday life into a vivid burst of optical perception.
Emerging as an artist in the mid-20th century, Katz forged a mode of figurative painting that fused the energy of Abstract Expressionist canvases with the American vernaculars of the magazine, billboard, and movie screen. Throughout his practice, he has turned to his surroundings in downtown New York City and coastal Maine as his primary subject matter, documenting an evolving community of poets, artists, critics, dancers, and filmmakers who have animated the cultural avant-garde from the postwar period to the present.

Staged in the city where Katz has lived and worked his entire life, and prepared with the close collaboration of the artist, this retrospective filled the museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda. Encompassing paintings, oil sketches, collages, drawings, prints, and freestanding “cutout” works, the exhibition began with the artist’s intimate sketches of riders on the New York City subway from the late 1940s and culminated in the rapturous, immersive landscapes that have dominated his output in recent years.

Alex Katz: Gathering was organized by Katherine Brinson, Daskalopoulos Curator, Contemporary Art, with Terra Warren, Curatorial Assistant, and with additional support from Andrea Zambrano, Curatorial Assistant.

Courtesy of the Guggenheim