ArtistsNetwork.com 49sometimes change their life. If they
take a risk and you respond to it, it’s
a fantastic experience, and you take
it with you. So what if they can’t
draw an elbow.” For Katz it’s not the
accomplishment or professional pol-
ish of the work but the excitement
of the artist engaging the world and
wresting something new from it.
... ON IMAGE-MAKING
One of the most interesting distinc-
tions that Katz makes is between
painting and image-making. “When
I was young, I was all for painting,” he
says, “but as I grew older, I began to see
that there were some artists who made
great images even if their painting abil-
ities were not so great.” Accordingly,
in his comments paired withCape Cod
Evening (opposite) by Edward Hopper
(1882–1967), Katz lauds Hopper’s
“strong images” but also points out his
“pedestrian technique.”
Katz feels much the same about
Francis Picabia (1879–1953).
“Picabia couldn’t paint his way out
of a box,” says Katz, “but when I saw
the big Surrealist show in Paris in
2015, his was the only painting that
interested me.”
In conversation, Katz pointed
out that images tend to have more
currency than painting because
everyone can understand them. “At
one time I had a clothing manufac-
turer—H&M—commission some
paintings to be printed on clothing,”
he recalls. “They put them on sale in
Miami, and the whole lot sold out in a
few hours. I could see that the images
alone, removed from the paintings,
were what was driving it.”
Elsewhere in the book, Katz
remarks that he almost prefers image-
making to painting. “A great image is
a great image,” he says. “Of course if
you can get it working together, the
painting and image, then you have
more muscle.”
Another distinction that Katz
makes throughout his book con-
cerns painting and illustration.
“YOU DON’T MAKE THINGS BY YOURSELF;
YOU ARE PART OF THE CULTURE, AND
PART OF IT IS THESE OTHER PEOPLE.”
—ALEX KATZ
Bette Davis
by Willard Cummings
1962; oil on canvas, 77¼ x42
COLBY COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART; GIFT
OF MISS BETTE DAVIS, 1973 005