Alex Katz - In Your Face
09 May 2002 - 25 August 2002 Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland Museumsmeile Bonn, Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 4, 53113 Bonn
[/] Alex Katz
Die Ausstellung des amerikanischen Malers Alex Katz zeigt erstmals in Deutschland eine umfassende Präsentation der 50 wichtigsten Gemälde seit 1953. [/] kunst- und ausstellungshalle der bundesrepublik deutschland
In Katz's paintings there is no pain, little tension, no emotion and zero sexuality. As snapshots from suburbia, his art is relentlessly vacuous. What is missing in Katz's art is a sense of moral or emotional complexity, a sense that life isn't quite this simple.
Presumably the studied neutrality of these scenes is deliberate. Katz was painting a nation on Prozac decades before that wonder drug had been invented. The question is, was he also painting for an audience on Prozac? Is there more to these pictures than first meets the eye? Is their emotional numbness, for example, a comment on the banality of American middle-class life?
The answer is no. [/] Art Critic London
