“Presented within a ‘widescreen’ format, the figures become both cinematic and theatrical”

Alex Katz: Black Paintings is published to coincide with the Timothy Taylor Gallery’s exhibition of iconic portraits by Alex Katz.

The publication also features a conversation between the artist and Iwona Blazwick, Director of the Whitechapel Gallery.

Katz’s paintings are at once figurative and abstract – his larger-than-life portraits and landscapes often looming large over their observers. However, in Black Paintings, rather than filling each frame, the subjects are assigned to the margins with black space occupying most of each canvas. What is striking about these portraits is both the depth and diversity of the black paint contrasted against the dramatically studio-lit figures.