Alex Katz - What about style? (2002)
New York artist Alex Katz, born 1927, is one of the painters who have most influenced today’s painting. Several generations of young painters refer to his exuberant big formats. Nonetheless, he has remained relatively unknown to a larger public. It’s been 50 years that Katz is defending figurative art not intending to look for form or content, but style - the very personal elegance of the artist in seizing everyday figures or landscapes. He was one of the first - fairly before pop artists like Warhol, Rosenquist or Lichtenstein - to play with the graphics of advertising, wide-angle photography and movie formats. Doing so, Katz became the forerunner of the modern image language of mass media. The film visits the artist in his rural summer studio in Maine and in Manhattan. Filmic impressions of landscapes or metropolitan life confront with Katz’ paintings of the same angle. The camera observes live the creation of Katz’ biggest format ever, “The Black Brook”, from the beginning to the end. And in different interviews, Katz reveals how come he was early in defending figurative painting - but late in being renowned for it.
Super 16mm, 52'