Alex Katz. Maine/New York

Maine/New York surveys three decades of paintings by Alex Katz (born 1927). A quintessential New York artist, Katz is also a part-time resident of rural Maine, and the subject matter of his paintings accordingly shifts from landscape to cityscape, from rural vignette to Manhattan interior. In this volume, published for an exhibition at Colby College Museum of Art--where the largest public collection of Katz's resides--the pleasant haze of city afternoons is juxtaposed with the flickering greens of a rural path; the buzz of a fashionable social occasion with the dusk as it descends on a pond in the Maine woods. Along the way, we encounter the family members and friends who populate Katz's paintings, cast in his distinctive treatments of light and atmosphere.