Forum: Regarding Alex Katz

July 15 –  September 10, Forum Gallery

“When I walked in, I was sunstruck,” says Madeleine Grynsztejn of her first look at Alex Katz’s painting, Autumn, when she was planning the 1999/2000 Carnegie International.  “I was struck not only emotionally by the beauty of the subject, and intellectually by his absolute sureness of method, but viscerally sunstruck by the painting.  It was like being in front of nature itself.” 

With the recent acquisition of both Autumn and The Walk, Carnegie Museum of Art has become a principal center for works by this important artist.  In response to the museum’s commitment, Katz himself donated six works, including a linocut of one of his best-known images of Ada, his wife and muse, Big Red Smile (1994), and an oil and aluminum cutout portrait of poet and critic (and Sewickley native) Edwin Denby, Edwin Edwin (1969).  These recent additions enhance the holdings already in place, including an early landscape painting, Ive’s Field No. 1 (1953).  The exhibition will also include portraits of Alex Katz by other artists.

Katz was born in Brooklyn in 1924, and studied at the Cooper Union in New York, and at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine.  He now lives in Soho. Throughout his career, Katz displayed great artistic independence, painting figuratively when older artists told him “figuration is obsolete,” and synthesizing two of the major and seemingly irreconcilable tendencies in modern art--representation and abstraction. 

 “There was no doubt in my mind that we should pursue an acquisition, which is in the spirit of the International,” Grynsztejn says.  “When we were looking at his work for the International, Richard Armstrong and I were the first to see Autumn complete, in the studio, and to make our desires for it known.  Alex has said to me that it is the culmination of his recent work with landscape.  He considers it one of his new masterpieces.”
 
 

Education:  Focus on Festivals                                                   

Pittsburghers love festivals.  Most art fairs and community celebrations  take place in the summer, and during July and August, festival-goers can look for a hands-on activity set up by the Museum of Art at many of these events. 
 “This is a way for the museum to participate in the community and form friendships with an audience that may not be coming to the museum regularly,” explains Wendy Osher, assistant curator of education.  “The kids enjoy the activity, and it gives us an opportunity to talk to the parents about what else the museum has to offer.”

 The activities relate to works of art on view in the museum and illustrate how even very young children can enjoy the collection and exhibitions. 

 “We participated in to several festivals last year –at the National Aviary, the Head Start Family Festival, the Regatta, as well as other neighborhood locations – and we want to expand the program and make it even more effective,” explains Osher.  To that end, the museum’s new community liaison specialist, Deborah Starling Sims, has joined the festival team helping to establish a dialogue with communities throughout the area. 
 “This is part of a long-term goal of encouraging participation in the museum,” says curator of education Marilyn Russell, “including activity that takes place outside the museum’s walls.  The festival program is one of the ways that we can be active partners in the vitality of our region and give kids and parents a chance to enjoy a little creative self-expression together.”