Homage to Monet (Triptych), 2019, a three-panel work by Alex Katz, depicts a mass of yellow circles against a black background, with a few white lilies scattered throughout. As the title indicates, Katz made this work as an homage to the French Impressionist Claude Monet, who famously painted water lilies at his home in Giverny, France. Here, Katz reinterprets the theme, depicting lilies from the pond at his summer house in Maine with a limited palette of bright, saturated colors and flat, abstract forms. Katz came of age as an artist in the 1950s alongside Jackson Pollock and the abstract expressionists, employing their allover compositional technique in which the imagery is treated as uniform throughout.[1] Katz went on to develop his own cool, highly designed style characterized by its restrained treatment of color, line, and subject, sharing sensibilities with pop art. Above all, his works impart a sense of light and dynamism, exemplified by the bright lily pond seen here.
[1] Serpentine Galleries