Alex Katz (the painter).

Here are some pertinent facts about Alex Katz that I found around the internet (mostly wikipedia. I trust wikipedia. I know I shouldn't. But I do.)


- Katz has admitted to destroying a thousand paintings during his first
ten years as a painter in order to find his style.-he tried to paint “faster than [he] can think.” interesting because I took a lot of time thinking on those last few paintings I did.-got inspiration from kitagawa utamaro
-influenced by films, television, and billboard advertising, Katz began
painting large-scale paintings, often with dramatically cropped faces-After 1964, Katz increasingly portrayed groups of figures. He would
continue painting these complex groups into the 1970s, portraying the
social world of painters, poets, critics, and other colleagues that
surrounded him.-In 1977, Alex Katz was asked to create a work to be produced in
billboard format above Times Square, New York City. The work, which was
located at 42nd Street and 7th Avenue, consisted of a frieze composed
of 23 portrait heads of women. Each portrait measured twenty feet high,
and was based on a study Katz did from life. The billboard extended 247
feet long along two sides of the RKO General building and wrapped in
thee tiers above on a 60-foot tower. Katz was commissioned in 1980 by
the US General Service Administration's Art in Architecture Program to
create an oil on canvas mural in the new United States Attorney’s
Building at Foley Square, New York City. The mural, located inside the
Silvio V. Mollo Building at Cardinal Hayes Place & Park Row, is 20 feet
high by 20 feet wide-Katz attended Woodrow Wilson High School for its unique program that
allowed him to devote his mornings to academics and his afternoons to
the arts. That reminds me of STAC.

Some useful technical info
-To make one of his large works, Katz paints a small oil sketch of a
subject on a masonite board; the sitting might take an hour and a half.
He then makes a small, detailed drawing in pencil or charcoal, with the
subject returning, perhaps, for the artist to make corrections. Katz
next blows up the drawing into a "cartoon," sometimes using an overhead
projector, and transfers it to an enormous canvas via "pouncing"—a
technique used by Renaissance artists, involving powdered pigment
pushed through tiny perforations pricked into the cartoon to recreate
the composition on the surface to be painted. Katz pre-mixes all his
colors and gets his brushes ready. Then he dives in and paints the
canvas—12 feet wide by 7 feet high or even larger—in a session of six
or seven hours.


His style is very simple, but you can still tell who that person is. When I mean simple, I mean he doesn't use too many different shades of colors and details. I noticed a lot of bright colors. He also paints on a very large scale, which is why I will be painting on a huge canvas. I don't think I've ever worked on a painting this big (not including any sets I've painted). Alex Katz Also paints celebrities, like I will for my School of Katz painting. I paint celebrities a lot because it makes me more of a perfectionist about it. Of course being a perfectionist can get unhealthy, but it can also push me a lot to do better, and to make things right. If I mess up how a stranger looks in a painting, I wouldn't be as upset about as I would if it were somebody I know of. I've said it before but I don't want to put them to shame. This makes me work harder.

Not sure where, but I feel like I have seen this painting before. I'm pretty sure I've seen  a few Katz paintings in person before. It is of his son Vincent.

I think this one is my favorite. Not quite sure why.

I like the lines on the glasses here.