STUDIO VISIT
Alex Katz in conversation with BRIAN APPEL
Recorded Sunday, Feb. 22,
2004.
Rudy Burckhardt
Alex Katz and "Cocktail Party" 1965
Estate of Rudy Burckhardt
Brian Appel: When did you
first know that painting and you were destined to be full time dancing
partners? Why didn't you gravitate toward the written word? Or act?
Or take up photography or film?
Alex Katz: I always liked
painting. I always liked working on things. And in art school I learned
how to paint and then did some plein-air painting and that's what I
wanted to do.
BA: Was it the visceral quality
of paint? Was there a physicality...?
AK: Yeah. It was visceral.
I feel a connection with the paint. If I had another life I would have
been a dancer or a boxer or something. I always liked the physical.
BA: The scale of these paintings...
I mean the size must be...
AK: They're no strain to
paint at all. Not a physical strain. I did a lot of dance sets and got
to work in a larger scale. I think you have strengths and weaknesses
and I found out that I have a real strong sense of scale.
BA: It's intuitive... unconscious?
AK: Yes.
BA: How do you determine
the size of a particular...?
AK: Well it has to do with
the energy of the image. Sometimes I'll do them a certain size and then
wonder... could it go bigger? Or, is it finished?
BA: So the painting speaks
to you in a way. How much time do you physically spend painting every
day?
AK: Well it varies. I don't
paint on a regular nine-to-five... some days I might do a sketch that
takes 20 minutes and that's my day's work. Doing some of these sunset
things and night things... you have 15 minutes to get that effect. And
a lot of times I wait until the next night for that.
BA: Magic... the magic.
AK: Yeah. Magic 15 minutes.
You're painting things that other people haven't painted much. And you
have to adjust to that. I don't have a schedule. I adjust to...
BA: ...an inner ear? How
long has that been in place?
AK: Well, I first tried to
paint six hours a day. I did it for four months one summer and I did
a lot of terrible paintings.
BA: ... because you were
formatting yourself?
AK: Yeah. My temperament
isn't that way. After I painted in art school for three years it started
to work. Now I just do the whole painting. You know, where it used to
take 6 to 18 hours... I was doing in an hour.
BA: So there's a real strong
connection between when you're working and your energy rushes.
AK: I couldn't work the way
other painters were working.
BA: Sounds a little bit like
jazz.
AK: It is. Well, some critics
have described it as such. A German curator once said that the work
has a structure with an improvisation put on top of it. A lot of the
big landscapes are that way. The tops are all improvised and usually
the trees are the structure.
BA: When you're painting,
could you say that you're in a zone?
AK: Yeah. You go in and out,
actually. When you do the sketches it's totally zone. You have an idea
and you just try to put it together real quick.
BA: Outside time?
AK: Yes. It's real immediate.
And when you paint on one of these big things you usually work within
a lot of references at once. A lot of it is conscious... I'm just thinking
about getting the paint on the canvas the way I want. And then, if it's
going to be any good, you slip off into an unconscious thing and you
float for awhile.
BA: Would you say that act...
being in the zone would be where you want to be most of the time?
AK: I don't know. It's part
of the painting. You have an idea what you want to do and you have your
subject matter and your execution. If you're out of it you have to stop
and figure out is it any good? Or, what does this mean to anyone else?
BA: When you say it's good,
is your criteria based on how long the image extends your viewing experience?
AK: No. You have an idea
that you want and the painting usually moves away from it a little bit.
And then do you adjust it or do you accept it?
BA: Like a conversation with
somebody else.
AK: You react to it and then
it goes another way.
BA: How do you come up with
the idea of creating a particular image?
AK: You have big ideas like,
"I want to make an environmental landscape". This is what
I want to do... that's the idea... and then I have to find it.
BA: When you say 'environmental
landscape' do you mean stepping inside a world that you've totally created?
AK: A painting that you don't
look at but it comes out and wraps around you.
BA: I totally experienced
that at the Marlborough Gallery at your last show there. I would walk
up to a certain point...
AK: ... and it would just
wrap around you.
BA: Yes. And I would step
inside this world. It was surreal. When was the first time you did one
of these?
AK: I don't know. They were
gradual. It started with the nocturnal painting, Wet Evening where I
did an 11- foot square painting out the window. And then I was up at
Maine in the winter and I looked at a tree and some snow. I said, "Wouldn't
it be great if I could make that wrap around you?
BA: What year was that?
AK: It must have been in
the early 90's.
BA: When you were in your
late 20's, Robert Frank began the cross-country trip that produced the
pictures for his enormously influential book The Americans. In 1955,
Frank was a mature and sophisticated artist ready to produce his best
work. You had just had your first one-person show and started on your
first collages. Would you describe yourself as a raw talent at that
point in time or were you immersed in what we would today call your
artistic voice?
AK: I knew the collages were
'real' art. Everything else I knew was in front of me. I think it takes
longer to develop a painter than a photographer. You can be a really
good photographer at 16. The technical baggage you have to develop takes
longer.
BA: What... 15 years would
you say?
AK: Yeah. You know... if
you start young it takes 15 years or so.
BA: Right.
AK: So in '55 I was doing
interesting work. My technique had gotten pretty good by then. It was
almost ten years out of art school. But it wasn't the intellectually
aggressive work that I would be doing.
BA: Were you married at this
point?
AK: It was before I met Ada.
I was married earlier to Jean Cohen.
BA: Was that, like a childhood...
AK: No. It was one of those
art school things. We were almost like roommates and then I lived with
another girl for a couple of years and then I ran into Ada in '57.
BA: Did you know instantly
that...
AK: Yeah. She's really smart
and very hip. She had read Beckett before any of the avant-garde poets
had. She's a scientist. She had bought abstract paintings and she wondered
why I wasn't painting abstract.
BA: That made sense at the
time. So your sensibility...
AK: Well, we're both New
Yorkers and we both came from immigrant families and both families were
cultured. I mean her family would be listening to the opera on Sunday
and my family would be listening to opera on Sunday. Our family background
wasn't that different... she's Italian and we're Russian Jews. So it
was similar. And then we both were into jazz and she knew an awful lot
about music.
BA: This was happening around
the time of the "Beats"?
AK: Yeah. Well... neither
one of us were attracted to the 'beats' much. They were more bohemian.
We weren't. She liked Auden and Beckett when I met her, and I was getting
into Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch and Jimmy Schuyler. It's... you know,
you relate to people 30% or 40%... but you don't relate ever, like,
on 100%. But this was a lot. A lot more than I ever thought I could
relate to anyone.
BA: That's fantastic. Your
mother was an actress was she not? How did that impact you growing up...
seeing your mother performing?
AK: Actually my father took
her off the stage. That was it. She was all finished. We lived out in
the suburbs and that had nothing to do with the culture. There was a
big cultural gap between my parents and myself. My father thought I
should assimilate and he didn't want me reciting poetry.
BA: He was a businessman.
He was a serious...
AK: He was not a serious
businessman. He was really unusual. He was very wealthy in Russia and
ran a business from a billiard parlor. All he did was play billiards
and chase girls.
BA: Sounds like a gangster...
AK: No, no... quite the opposite.
He was the guy who could do everything. He painted little flowers on
the bedspread. But he could also throw a table of dishes across a room.
You know, with a flip of his wrist, he took a big heavy kitchen table
filled with dishes and sent it right across the room landing right next
to my mother.
BA: Wow! Was he as tall as
you... over six-foot?
AK: No. He was shorter and
much more muscular. He was like 5'9" or something, but really athletic.
If I had his build I would have been a professional athlete. I wouldn't
have fooled around with art.
BA: So you were very into
sports?
AK: Yeah. I grew up in a
kind of funny neighborhood. It was at the beginning of the suburbs.
And the boys on the street were all athletic and hung out there. And
there were two artists on the block. One was a designer. When his father's
ship went down he opened his own business at 18. And I was doing illustrations
for his catalogues at 16.
BA: What kind of stuff were
you illustrating?
AK: He became a lamp designer
and I was illustrating his lamps. He took me to restaurants in New York
and gave me Mondrian books. And the other guy down the block wanted
to be an advertising professional. And I followed him. And then there
was a guy who seemed a little effeminate and liked to go to plays. So
I would go to plays with this guy.
BA: So you were illustrating,
going to plays, eating at restaurants and doing sports...
AK: ...illustrating and also
lettering. And he was giving me books which were really out there. And
this other guy was going to be a commercial artist. He was really good.
He was awesome. I had all that stuff. But in a sense it was all things
sports. My close friends were the ball players...
BA: ... the physical and
the creative operating when you were in your early teens...
AK: Yes. There was all that
in one block. It was amazing. I was really kind of lucky.
BA: What was the name of
the street that you...?
AK: 173rd Street. And it
was 116th Avenue. It was right next to a big golf course. And Babe Ruth
used to play there. We used to yell... "Hit it over..." and
he used to knock balls out of sight. [Laughs]
BA: Oh, you're kidding?
AK: No, I'm not. It was a
special time. And the parents were very artistic and sophisticated.
We had oil paintings in the house. And they looked... I didn't like
them because they were messy.
BA: Abstract oil paintings?
AK: They were Russian Expressionist.
I guess it might have come from a boyfriend of my mother's.
BA: Originals.
AK: Yeah. All original oils.
But I didn't have any connection with painting. I think my connection
was with illustration and illustrators.
BA: So your art activity
started off as a practical pursuit. Your approach was that of a craftsman
as opposed to... "I'm a fine artist and I'm going to Fine Art School".
AK: Yeah. And then it evolved
into something. When I was 26 I looked at the paintings and said they're
not bad. But I couldn't see them before that. Dick, this friend of mine,
went to a commercial school and told me to go there... so I did. My
parents said, "Don't go." And my principal at the grammar
school said, "Don't go," because they tested me when I was
in 7th grade and found out I was halfway through high school. And it
was a big shock to everyone because I wasn't particularly studious.
I was making a lot of noise. They were all surprised at the tests. I
really didn't need the academic high school. So I followed Dick to the
commercial place. At 16, he told his teacher he was quitting and the
teacher said, "Why?" and he said, "You have nothing more
to teach me." [Laughs] At 19 he was a big art director. And he
wanted me to go with him. He said, "I'm going to the top, Alex,
and I'll take you with me." And I said, "I got into Cooper
Union and I'm having too much fun."
BA: How was the teaching
at Cooper Union?
AK: Well, I didn't know anything,
so it was wonderful. It was really marvelous.
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