"At Skowhegan I tried plein air painting and found my subject matter and a reason to devote my life to painting. The sensation of painting from the back of my head was a high that I followed until the present.”
A rresting the gaze with bold swathes of deep cobalt blue, Alex Katz’s Canoe With Figure is a brilliant example of the artist’s distinctly stylized and markedly idiosyncratic aesthetic that has defined the world of contemporary figurative painting. Executed in 1974, Canoe With Figure exemplifies Katz’s rich history depicting the leisurely scenes of Maine, the birthplace of his passion for painting and a destination which he travels to every summer with his wife, Ada. In these works, Katz reimagines the coastal Maine landscape with glimpses into intimate personal moments surrounded by vivid planes of color. Canoe With Figure represents his most archetypal Maine works, featuring a beloved birch canoe which Katz frequently rendered. Recently the subject of a major retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Katz’s Canoe With Figure creates a stunning perception of everyday life, revealing the spirit of his environment in his signature chromatic, reductive style.
“People say painting is real and abstract. Everything in paint that’s representation is false because it’s not representational, it’s paint. We speak different languages and have different syntax. The way I paint, realistic, is out of abstract painting as opposed to abstract style. So I use a line, a form and a color…For an artist, this is the highest thing an artist can do—to make something that’s real for his t.mes , where he lives.”
Born in Brooklyn in 1927, Katz came of age as an artist during the heyday of Modernism and the New York School. Resisting the push toward nonrepresentational abstraction and gestural vigor, the painter forged his own path that paid tribute to artists like Renoir and Matisse. He was also taken by the graphic work of early Pop artists who prioritized consumer and advertisement images of the new modern age. Often grouped with that cadre of artists, Katz was nonetheless distinct in his use of figuration to explore more personal subjects. While best known for his large-scale portraiture, Alex Katz has been prolific in his landscape works throughout his practice, which mark some of the most important turning points in his oeuvre.
Katz first went to Maine 1949, when he received a Cooper Union scholarship to study at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. While at Skowhegan, Katz developed a passion for the light and scenery of the area as he was encouraged to compose landscape works. Describings this new focus, the artist explains, "At Skowhegan I tried plein air painting and found my subject matter and a reason to devote my life to painting. The sensation of painting from the back of my head was a high that I followed until the present" (Alex Katz, “Starting Out,” New Criterion 21, no. 4, December 2002, (online)). The small farmhouse situated on a pond which he bought in 1956 and painted bright yellow became an immediate stimulus, as did the artist’s nuanced environment. Now aged 96, Katz has painted in Maine for over fifty years and has canvassed nearly every facet of the property as inspiration for his artistic practice – capturing the flora and fauna of the surrounding land as well as iconic physical structures such as the artist’s often-used light birch canoe seen in Canoe With Figure.
"Katz’s portraits are true to the way we experience others. They eloquently convey the tension between the determinate outer appearance and the indeterminate inner reality of someone known only from the outside… For all their everydayness, Katz’s figures have an air of transient strangeness to them, suggesting the mystery of their inner existence, perhaps even to themselves.”
The present work equally resides in the genres of portraiture and landscape, a signature quality of Katz’s best known and revered paintings. Displaying the artist’s deep connection to nature, Katz renders his idyllic pond-side scene with fluid application of paint, deftly creating a sense of movement and energy within the flatness of the picture plane. Katz sprinkles small hints at the narrative yet still denies a more complete interpretation of the scene, creating a fascinating push-pull in our engagement with the subject matter. It is both the inclusion and absence of clues in Katz’s paintings that continue to draw our eye in as viewers and captivate our attention long after our initial impression of the scene. The wide brushstrokes of the water, visible across the surface of the work, are imbued with speed and duration, creating a sublime, rippled reflection and elegantly juxtaposing the intricately detailed veining of the canoe and. This inherent dynamism within the present work is thus contrasted with the sudden stillness of the subject and cool color palette.
Canoe With Figure conjures a sense of nostalgia, capturing a blissful introspective moment preceding narrative action in Katz’s beloved summer destination in Maine. Through his highly individualized mode of realism, Katz here fosters a palpable intimacy and serenity framed within an ideal bright summer day in Maine. In his stunning perception of everyday life, seeks a sense of wonder and intrigue, allowing the inscrutable nature of his subject to shine through. Imbued with a breathtaking liveliness, Canoe With Figure demonstrates Katz’s unparalleled ability to capture a moment, if not a second, in t.mes .
