Carl Ratcliff, Alex Katz

- The definitive book on one of our favorite painters, this gorgeous and larger than life hardback volume charts the development of an iconic artist's singular American style.

- In Alex Katz, editor Carl Ratcliff, with the help of Alex’s son, poet Vincent Katz, has distilled the artist’s nearly 80 year career into 416 pages of photographs, sketches, ephemera, contemporary works, and over 250 full-color paintings (many never before published), all printed at a stunning, never-before-seen scale.

- Over seven decades, Katz has developed his vision with determination as the tides of avant-garde and academic fashion ebbed and flowed. His first audience was other painters (including de Kooning and Philip Guston), and today, still, he is perhaps best understood by other artists: those who appreciate how difficult it is to make something so simple, so well. Working in a representational style while his classmates celebrated Abstract Expressionism, eschewing slick surfaces for a pared-down view while his peers went glossy with Pop, Katz cleaved to one vision, a few locations, and subjects. Katz's endurance and commitment to developing an original American style is explored in depth, from his boyhood influences to an artistic circle that included John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Lois Dodd, Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara, Fairfield Porter, Yvonne Rainer, Larry Rivers, and Paul Taylor.

- This volume features a gorgeous, vibrant slipcase, ideal for gifting and coffee table display.