ThroughoutAlex Katzs seven-decade career, fashion has been a preoccupation.
Coinciding with the 60th Venice Biennale, the exhibition ranges from abstracted landscapesboth jubilant and ominousto pure fashion.
My parents were interested in fashion.
Alex Katz,Claire McCardell 1, 2022
They were from Russia and were very concerned with how they appeared.
My father was a very sharp dresser.
Hed go to work in a shirt, tie, and pantsall pressedand a beat-up suede jacket.
Alex Katz,Claire McCardell 10,2022
I didnt realize how chic that was until I was 35.
But I always knew his ties were glorious.
Fashion is in the air.
Alex Katz,Claire McCardell 7, 2022
Every so often you see something in the paper, and it looks good, but not too often.
Its about how people wear their clothes.
When someone dresses up and feels good, they emanate that.
Alex Katz,Claire McCardell 7, 2022
I think fashion and art relate a lot.
Artists sometimes find fashion is commercial, but actually, they both are.
And sometimes they both arent, too.
Alex Katz, Claire McCardell 9, 2022
I like fashion and how it makes something new and fresh.
[Cristobal] Balenciaga was a great artist in the 1930s into the 1940s.
Very few sculptures from that period come close to his beautiful forms.
Alex Katz,Claire McCardell 12,2022
Id putCharles Jamesin that category.
They really were perfect.
They come as they are, and you want them that way.
I never alter the clothes.
The art world was so traditional and dreary.
I thought it could use a little bit of up.
I always thought McCardell was very special, even a little heroic.
She made clothes for everybody, and she had a hand on American taste.
Her clothes were a little bluntthey werent really refined, either in cut or conception.
But they were so new and different from European fashion.
The black and yellow plaids she used were a real effrontery to Europeans, but not to Americans.
It was like a record that screeches.
They look good at the barbecue pit, whereas in France they would look silly.
Her designs altered my thinking about clothing.
It seemed cumbersome, so instead of using gray, I just used lines.
Id never done anything like that before, and it worked.
You want to make a painting that looks new.
Fashion advertising was a big source of inspiration for me because the designer wanted to make something new.
Some of it was very superficial, but it functioned very well in fine art for me.
I admire Adrians designs for theater.
I dont know who designed for Ginger Rogers, but whatever she wore was always impeccable.
Theblack dresswas a thing during the 50s that girls wore to parties.
She made all of Adas clothes until she married meso ages 5 to 29and imparted great taste to her.
The dress is perfect.
It has a laidback quality, like a Dior.
In that dress, Ada will be the most attractive woman in the room.
A magazine had asked several artists to work with different designers.
They first gave me a designer whose work I didnt really like, so then they gave meNorma Kamali.
I got this yellow raincoat of hers, and I really liked working with high fashion.
When I didPas de Deux,I called Norma up and asked for more clothes.
I thought it was sensational.
We used a scrim and lit it from the back.
You could see it from four blocks away.
I designed a whole line, and then the pandemic came, and they went out of business.
I had a lot of fun designing.
I wanted to do a mans coat with a long lapel that went eight inches below the belt.
I wanted one for myself, of course.
I also wanted to make one in white, which would be the loudest and flashiest.
