Hiroshi

Alex Katz evades easy conscription into movements associated with artists of his generation. While favoring the bold, simplified compositions of advertising and redolent of the billboard and Pop art, his work is undeniably about the painted gesture, a lesson learned from the Abstract Expressionist artists, like Franz Kline, whom he admires. Katz also remains committed to familiar art historical genres, such as portrait and landscape painting. In this work, Hiroshi Kawanishi, a friend of the artist and a master silkscreen printer, sits against the backdrop of a downtown Manhattan night. Katz staged the Japan-born Kawanishi in the Bleecker Street home of the critic Irving Sandler, using the color black to connect figure and cityscape. In his sharp black suit and tie, and with his hair almost blending into the night sky, Kawanishi seems to be on the same plane as the city with the outline of buildings only intimated by the blocks of white-yellow paint that indicate lights within. A painting of a printer in the home of a critic, gifted to The Met by another artist friend, this work is a testament to the artistic networks that flourished in New York during the 1980s.