The Alex Katz show at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is well worth seeing (through July 29). One of the great things about a printmaker such as Katz is that there are 50-70 copies of each work out there and it is easy for a museum to gather 100 percent of the artist’s best work for display. The prints are notable for their size and the ability of the artist to communicate economically. For those familiar with Katz’s portraits, some of the landscape work will be shocking, particularly some prints of reflections in a pond. Encountering these after looking at the portraits is kind of like watching an Olympic skater fall.
If you have kids, make sure to take them to the adjacent model ship gallery where the pull-out drawers containing curios will delight.
I saw it last night, and wasn’t that excited about it. I wasn’t familiar with his work, and tried to go in to it with an open mind.
Maybe I missed something big, but it seemed like Alex Katz didn’t have any particularly notable technical or emotional achievements. It was just lots of pictures of his family (and other people I didn’t know), in pretty pedestrian poses / locations.
Compared to other printmakers active in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s (Lichtenstein, Calder, Warhol, etc.), or other printmakers of today (e.g., Sabra Field, http://www.sabrafield.com/), he didn’t seem particularly notable.
Again, maybe I missed it, or didn’t do enough research beforehand, or should have gotten the audio guide, or something, but it struck me as a bland set of prints. Compared with some of the other stuff the MFA has featured, or the MFA has in its collection, or printmakers out there, it seemed like a very dull show.
It was also unusually low energy. Not many people in the galleries, etc. Maybe that had something to do with it?