Three Blockbuster Exhibitions At The Serpentine, Tate and RA

Alex Katz at Serpentine Gallery

A plethora of landscapes and a selection of portraits are displayed amidst Kensington Gardens. Alex Katz (b, 1927) is most synonymous with figurative painting, a style he created in response to abstract expressionism in the New York 50’s. A painter of contemporary life, his portraits convey his interest for films, billboards, advertising and poetry. His works feature luminous close-ups of faces, defined by a smooth surface and a burst of colour.

The landscapes follow the same guidelines with the use of refined textures and fluid lines. Katz experiments with the notion of capturing the present tense in paint. The figurative elements in his landscapes and the restricted use of colours and shapes tranform the realism of his subjects into intangible abstract scenes.

Alex Katz, Quick Light at Serpentine Gallery until September 11th 2016

Georgia O’Keeffe at Tate Modern

Georgia O’Keeffe’s (1887-1986) will be an unmissable feature at Tate Modern over the coming months. The retrospective covers the intensive representation of magnified flowers known to be at the heart of the painter’s work. The artist denounced Freudian interpretations of flowers, insisting her work was about the form and abstraction of flowers.

Part of the American modernism movement, O’Keeffe stood out with her flowers but also her depiction of animal skulls and New Mexico desert landscapes. During this exhibition, Tate celebrates the flower painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 1932 which was the first female artist’s painting ever sold at the highest bid.

Georgia O’Keeffe at Tate Modern until October 30th 2016

David Hockney at the Royal Academy of Arts

David Hockney (b, 1937) returns to the RA with a new series of portraits elaborated in his Los Angeles studio. It took the artist two and a half years to complete this body of work. 82 portraits required 82 different posers that were involved in this project. Each of them had a 3-day sitting time frame in the same yellow chair with the same neutral background. A number of friends, family acquaintances and colleagues including John Baldessari, Celia Birtwell, Dagny Corcoran, Larry Gagosian, Frank Gehry, Barry Humphries, David Juda and Lord Rothschild as well as Hockney’s siblings, John and Margaret were subjects.

The chronological set-up of the portraits in the Sackler wing reveals Hockney’s ability to capture each personality, body-language and mannerism. The exhibition presents a subtle confrontation against the over-use of selfies, which disengages the personal dialogue between the poser and the viewer that is present in portraiture.

David Hockney, 82 Portraits and 1 Still-Life at the Royal Academy of Arts until October 2nd 2016

Text by Tamara Akcay