Cathy's Art Diary

Bright exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery of recent landscapes and portraits by Alex Katz. The first room had three wonderful big portraits with orange backgrounds which just zinged with colour. This contrasted with the lovely black and white pictures of windows in buildings one looked at through trees but the other just the shapes of windows on a black background. I loved the picture “Reflections in water” which was in a bold blue but gave the impression of being a night scene. Also the bold picture of a red house in a green wood. My favourite picture was called “Emma” and was a line of portraits of the same ballet dancer in different poses, again on an orange background. Closes on 11 September 2016. Reviews Times Guardian  

Small exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of recent works by New York artist Alex Katz. The first room was a wonderful installation portrait of flat cuts outs of heads on a shoulder height table. Arranged in 5 layers it is like looking into a crowd or across the room at a party. I liked the fact you could walk round it and discover the face of the back of the head you’d seen earlier. I was not so keen on the second room which had three large pictures which were not as intimate. Reviews Daily Telegraph