Favourite Painting #10 (Alex Katz)

"I wanted to paint a composition [because]...people don't paint compositions in the twentieth century much. And I wanted to use overlapping forms because people don't [paint them today]...So a cocktail party is a place where there are gestures, you know."

- Alex Katz


Alex Katz: The Cocktail Party, 1965

Cocktail parties were a favorite subject for Alex Katz in the 1960s. Here, he depicts one in his New York studio; another large painting from the same year shows a similar gathering on the lawn at his summer house in Maine. In each, the artist represents his immediate environment as one populated by a stylish group comfortably enjoying the privileges of their station—an effect compounded for art world denizens who could find their peers' faces in the crowd. For Katz, this aspect of the work was not inconsequential, as he noted about this painting, "I had to use something that was part of my life. I mean I couldn't paint angels or people in Vietnam, stuff like that." At the same time, the ambitious, multi-figured painting was motivated by the formal concerns of a representational painter.

- The Picker Art Gallery (Colgate University)