Lecture
The Baker Museum presents Alex Katz: Stage and Screen
with Kevin Lotery, Ph.D.
Kevin Lotery, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Modern & Contemporary Art at Boston College, Art, Art History, and Film Department
Since the beginning of his artistic life, Alex Katz has drawn conceptual and technical resources from the world of dance, performance and the theater. His collaborations with key choreographers and playwrights — including Laura Dean, Kenneth Koch and Paul Taylor — are crucial episodes in the development of cross-disciplinary thought in post-World War II American art, whether of the Abstract Expressionist or Pop variety. But his collaborations in theater and dance also open up intriguing questions specific to Katz’s own approach to painting as a collaborative encounter between image, surface, architecture and body.
This lecture will consider the role of the various theatrical proscenia — the screens, stages, surfaces, hinges and thresholds — that condition Katz’s work and its relation to other forms of image-making, from advertising to cinema. A particular focus will be on Katz’s late collaborations with Taylor — particularly the pivotal dance Last Look (1986) and related paintings. In these works, we see haunting glimpses of the kinds of dances, gestures and movements needed for a contemporary culture of infinite, and infinitely automated, image circulation.
This presentation is part of the exhibition Alex Katz: Theater and Dance.
All exhibition lecture tickets include same-day admission to The Baker Museum.