Photo ©2010 Jonathan Kemp
Originally posted: August 14, 2010
VIENNA – Alex Katz (b. 1927) is an American artist whose works on display at the Albertina in Vienna span from the 1960's to 2010. Though there are a few of his oils on canvas in the permanent display on upper floors, the entire lower level of the museum is showcasing a notable collection of his prints. His style and voice are much more fully realized through his prints. Katz's style is clean, it is understated. His works can be stark and rendered subjects contain little in the way of decoration, as in the case of Kym with Baseball Hat, below:
Though ornament is absent in some sense, nuance is not and Katz is highly trained at a sort of hyper-efficient visual language that rarely comes off as contrived or clever, though it could be called cool, and it often is. At one time Andy Warhol famously smirked, “Art is what you can get away with.” I have been frustrated and unsatisfied by Warhol prints I've seen at the Acquavella Gallery in New York and, just this past weekend, at the Yale University Art Gallery; perhaps artists like Katz compound this feeling. Katz's work is genuine, inspiring. If Warhol got away with something, Katz left something for this viewer, at least. Though minimalist, even where he works in almost two-dimensional monochrome with mere lines criss-crossing he gets it right, like an author who can describe an overlooked banality so perfectly they tap into a remarkable sense of truth. Woods (Aquatint, 1993) and Sunrise (Woodcut, 1995) are two pieces where I put Katz at this level.
Alex Katz - Woods (Aquatint, 1993).
Alex Katz - Sunrise (Woodcut, 1995).
The level of control Katz evidently maintains at each step furthermore shows his status as a printmaking master. In many ways he deftly bridges a gap between two art worlds - one where works of art were not intended for reproduction, and one where mass production and mass consumption exist. Printmaking is a process that can produce multiple copies of images and Katz's particular control over the steps of this reproductive process is what hit me so hard. In the display there are a few triptychs that are actually just side by side comparisons of different techniques - aquatint, screenprint, and woodcut - using the same image. The differences are noted by Katz as are the strengths of each medium in communicating his visual message. For different images, he prefers different approaches and printmaking processes, and this is always a carefully considered aesthetic choice. Choices such as these are imperative when making art, and it's wonderful to see this being so adeptly demonstrated in the Albertina display.
Working as I have for many years in music and photography, this is particularly poignant. Both the recording and photographic industries have been violently uprooted in the past decade or two, so much so that media and techniques, once commonly available and taught, are fighting for survival against the March of Technology. I speak of silver-halide film, magnetic tape, manual focus cameras, turntables, et cetera. These have been popularly ditched in favor of computers and digital iterations of mechanical designs. In many cases, quality and technical comparisons may favor the outdated products, though everybody is versed in the advantages and capabilities of the digital heirs. Yet discussions in casual conversation and in professional settings frequently turn towards the need for homogeneity, and why one should dominate, why one should be obsolete. Alex Katz's prints show that different processes create different results, and the job of the artist is to make an aesthetic choice, and make this choice on a case by case basis.
Too rarely do I hear of musicians taking a stand and assuming complete responsibility for the recording process in a way that successfully realizes an aesthetic goal. Though for many decades collaborations between musicians and engineers (a large number of whom actually had electrical engineering degrees) were highly proficient and reached wonderful heights - check out this article on Roy Halee and Paul Simon - now recording studios are often vacant and engineers' training and hours of practice are scarce compared to just 15 or 20 years ago. Additionally the music industry is, as always, following monetary momentum instead of craftsmanship and art, and seems to be failing to let artists or engineers really work and grow. Of course, the major labels are also losing money by these practices, which was not always true.
It is more now than ever the purview of a recording artist to take the entire scope of recording into an artistic realm and explore these different media as painters or other artists do. Just as there are acrylic and oil paints, linocuts, and aquatints, there are endless choices of microphones; there is cassette tape, there is vinyl, there is ProTools, and there is ADAT. The same goes for photographers - glass plates, tintypes, 110 film, fiber paper, and APS-C sensors all produce glaringly different types of images.
The fun of the Albertina's exhibit is taking part in enjoying the results of the documented efforts Katz undertook. On of my favorites was entitled The Green Cap (Woodcut, 1985). Here, Katz had a printing color mixed to minutely exacting specificity by a Japanese printer such as to chillingly replicate the color Katz saw on a Renaissance-era fresco in Italy. The print and the color is breathtaking in person (sadly not as much so in JPEG form), a supremely adorned print and an achievement that left me revisiting the work several times while I was still at the exhibit and again in my mind's eye months later. It testifies to the power and excitement possible through mastering one's craft.
Alex Katz - The Green Cap (Woodcut, 1985).
See more selections from the Albertina's exhibit here.
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