Alex Katz
The Red Smile
1963
Not on view
Date
1963
Classification
Paintings
Medium
Oil on linen
Dimensions
Overall: 78 7/8 × 115in. (200.3 × 292.1 cm)
Accession number
83.3
Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee
Rights and reproductions
© Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
In The Red Smile, Alex Katz painted a profile of his wife Ada’s face, set against a smooth red background. Although the portrait bears Ada’s features, it’s simplified, almost billboard-style rendering seems generic—an effect reinforced by its large scale, nearly 7 x 10 feet. Katz’s broad, unmodulated expanses of color resist a three-dimensional reading, which allies his work with Minimalist art that reduced form to bare essentials. The scale of the work, coupled with the cropping of the image and its smooth painting surface, produces an effect that the artist describes as the “immediate sensation you see before you focus.”
