Alex Katz. New York

This book brings together some of Katz's most striking images of the city of his birth and the locale with which he is most strongly identified. Coming of age during the triumph of the New York School of painting, Katz synthesized those influences with wide-ranging interests in art history, a tendency that he shared with the New York School poets. This volume pays special attention to Katz's relationship to contemporary poets, whose portraits he painted and with whom he has often collaborated. Besides the curator Juan Manuel Bonet's text Alex Katz New York and an interview with the artist conducted by Rachael Thomas, (Senior Curator: Head of Exhibition, IMMA) we have also included a fascinating anthology of poems by different friends of the artist. This anthology has been selected by Vincent Katz, son of Alex and a poet himself, and includes some of the most relevant American poets of the second half of the 20th century, including Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery and Robert Creeley.