In 1986, in The New York Times, the art critic John Russell offered a word of warning for visitors to the Alex Katz retrospective at the Whitney Museum. “The paintings look easy, the way Fred Astaire made dancing look easy and Cole Porter made words and music sound easy,” he wrote. “But don’t let’s be fooled.” The problem for many was—and still is—that the simplicity of Katz’s paintings belies their innovation. “Art that conceals art” is how Russell put it.
Prior to Katz’s rise to prominence, in the 1950s, the artist spent the best part of a decade slumming in New York lofts and moonlighting as a frame-maker, while searching for a way, in his words, to paint with “the same velocity as de Kooning” but in the genre of representational art. In the process, he destroyed a thousand paintings, sending them up in smoke from his fireplace.
