Vivien in White Coat (Albertina 741) is a typical work by Alex Katz. The original graphic goes back to the eponymous painting series “White Coat” which was shown in 2021 in the Gray Gallery in Chicago.

Reduced in formal language, flat colored light blue background and focused on the moment, the brief moment. White Coat features his daughter-in-law Vivien Bittencourt. Katz’s signature simplified portraits capture the essence of Bittencourt, a documentary filmmaker. The series explores a familial relationship that captivates the viewer through the scale of the form on the print. The intimacy expressed in “The White Coat” shows how movement and subtle pigments can express the essence of a person through color. Katz’s mastery of scenic moments, often portrayed through a lens, combined with soft and carefree colors create an indulgent atmosphere.

“Vivien in White Coat” from 2022 plays with the viewer’s perception of movement. The back curve of Bittencourt’s body and the close-up perspective create a vulnerable moment and create a friendly intimacy. The heavily pigmented blue background moves around her body as if conforming to her curves, rather than Bittencourt existing within this blue canvas. The absence of exposed body parts such as hands and face piques the viewer’s curiosity, as if to touch the two-dimensional shoulder. Katz invites the viewer to enter the canvas and ignite a tango of curiosity between Bittencourt and the viewer. These serial images seem like fleeting moments from memory. The simplicity of the images is great enough to allow us to foreground our own spatial moments. The specific details that indicate it is Bittencourt and the ambiguity play with our feelings of familiarity and distance. Even though the print is titled “The White Coat,” Katz plays with light and the aforementioned coat and continues to do so. In each painting, the light evolves in relation to the pigments highlighted on the coat Bittencourt wears in each work. The smoothness of the brushstrokes embodies the rapid shift between Bittencourt’s and Katz’s perspectives. “The White Coat” asks the viewer to look past all the distractions in our daily lives and focus on the small details that are often forgotten.

Vivien Bittencourt grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, where she received a degree in history from the University of São Paulo. In 1986, she moved to New York City to pursue her interest in filmmaking. She produced and directed documentaries about artists, including Rudy Burckhardt, Alex Katz and Kiki Smith. She also captured several historical poetry readings on film, including a 1988 reading of Jack Kerouac’s “Mexico City Blues” with Eileen Myles, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bernstein, Nina Zivancevic and Richard Hell, and a 1989 reading of Hanuman Books authors with Herbert Huncke, Taylor Mead, Elaine Equi, Cookie Mueller, Gregory Corso and Rene Ricard. Vivien in White Coat is an exemplary work by Alex Katz now available at Frank Fluegel Gallery – this print features Katz’s clean lines and minimal approach to portraiture, and the monochromatic light blue background that is typical of his compositions. These portraits have no clear narrative – it is not important for the viewer to know the person or story behind the artwork. What Alex Katz is trying to emphasize with Vivien with White Hat is actually the beauty of the subjects. The use of soft colors and emphasis on fashionable details in his paintings transforms the coldness of sharp lines, lack of detail, and flatness into a work of art that the viewer can enjoy. Vivien in White Coat is a silkscreen print.

Alex Katz / Pioneer of Pop Art

Alex Katz is especially famous for his figurative paintings: The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, he was born in New York in 1927. A pioneer of Pop Art, he always focused on the essentials and early on explored simplified forms and high-contrast color composition. His art is diverse, but always has beauty as its central theme. The artist can now look back on more than 200 solo exhibitions as well as around 500 group exhibitions; his diverse works are part of over 100 collections worldwide. Alex Katz lives and works in New York and Maine. Vivien in White Coat is likely to become a classic among recent prints. Alex Katz is one of the best known and most exhibited artists of his generation. Often associated with the Pop Art movement, Katz began exhibiting his work in 1954 and has since created an acclaimed body of work that includes paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints. His earliest works were inspired by various aspects of mid-century American culture and society, including television, film, and advertising. Known for his large-scale works with a bold simplicity and an exaggerated color palette, Katz created what art historian Robert Storr called “a new and distinctive kind of realism in American art, combining aspects of both abstraction and representation.” Since the 1950s, Alex Katz’s works have been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions around the world. His works are in nearly 100 public collections worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Tate Gallery, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among many others.