ABSTRACT
The portraits of Frank O'Hara, Al Held, Edwin Denby, Red Grooms, Joe Brainard, Elaine de Kooning, Richard Bellamy, Irving Sandler, and all the folks in "One Flight Up" and "Lawn Party" have an interest quite apart from their quality as works of art. With Alex Katz we are out of the Existentialist woods, basking in the clear, bright light of an easy sociability. Yet Mr. Katz belonged—he still belongs—to the milieu in which de Kooning is venerated. Mr. Katz moved into the orbit of Pop taste, helping himself to the sense of scale that Pop derived from advertising art, and to the slick color and hard light and cartoonlike modeling that went with it. Also in the sixties, Mr. Katz developed the "cutout," freestanding flat paintings, usually portraits, painted front and back, often cropped in unexpected ways. They are enormously engaging, very accurate, and quite perfect as far as they go.
