Alex Katz A landmark appreciation of this towering figure in contemporary painting.Survey by Carter Ratcliff, Interview by Robert Storr, Focus by Iwona Blazwick, Artists Choice text by New York School Poets, Alex Katz (b.1927), a key New York-based artist since the early 1960s, is a towering figure in contemporary painting He is best known for his larger-than-life portraits of sophisticated women, painted with consummate technique, as well as portraits of men, group portraits, landscapes and interiors This is the most up-to-date survey available of his extensive oeuvre His work is in many major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and the Nationalgalerie, Berlin This expanded 256-page edition devotes ample space to his lush paintings while covering the full span of his prolific 50-year career Carter Ratcliff is a poet and an art critic. His books include Give Me Tomorrow (1983), a collection of poems with illustrations by Alex Katz; John Singer Sargent (1983); The Fate of a Gesture: Jackson Pollock and Postwar American Art (1998); and Out of the Box: The Reinvention of Art 1965-1975 (2000). He was awarded the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism, College Art Association, in 1987, and is a leading world expert on Alex Katz. Robert Storr is Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Formerly Senior Curator at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2004 he curated the 5th SITE Sante Fe Biennial in New Mexico. He was a contributing author to Phaidons Louise Bourgeois (2003), Raymond Pettibon (2001) and Robert Mangold (2000) and has written regularly for magazines such as Artforum, Art in America, Frieze and Parkett. Iwona Blazwick is Director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London. As Head of Exhibitions and Display at Tate Modern, London (1997-2001), as Director of Exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1986-92), and as an independent curator, she has realized many international exhibitions of modern and contemporary art and has published texts on numerous living artists. From 1993-97 she was Commis