FOREVER AND A DAY

By Greg Evans

It was during our wanderings recently in Europe when we came across a series of a magnetic figurative art creations on giant canvas that captivated us and drew us into the gray modernistic edifice that turned out to be a museum situated warily on a steep cliffside overlooking a combination of history and eternity. I entered the building feeling anxious and unsure of what I was getting myself into. I have always been an art museum junky and enthusiast and I have traveled widely in search of all the great works as well as those artists that I have never heard of but mesmerize me with a fleeting glance. The artist we discovered that day was Alex Katz, an American whose giant colorful works jumped into the room with you like an explosion. Each piece had its on aura and intensity. For over an hour we studied the works and discussed them and thoroughly enjoyed them.

Born in 1927 in Brooklyn, New York, Katz studied first at The Cooper Union and then the Schowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting in Maine. Over the first ten years of trying to become a painter and developing a style Katz had mentioned that he destroyed thousands of paintings that he didn't feel was representative of a style for which to build his legacy. His collections have been in museums all over the world including Hawaii, Washington D.C., Chicago, New York, Salzburg, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Munich, Tokyo, and I have only just discovered him!

His work is not just a reflection of a specific decade capturing the scenes and styles of any one point in a century but is an entire century. One of his paintings from the 60's or 70's could easily have been painted in 2013, or better yet 2060. Is that jumping out of the fryer into the fire? Depends on how critical you are of art and it's meaning in society. Art, in my opinion, is as important to life as automobiles. Many people may say that that is absurd, but my reasoning is that it provides the world with beauty and pleasure and without such distractions, the grind and monotony and agony and sadness of life would drive each person, one-by-one insane or into the grave. As a society we need the ability to lose ourselves in things that are pleasant. Everybody does and those that don't, die young, end up in jails or hen houses. That is only a supposition. Creating a style for the ages is difficult and attempted by many, successfully achieved by only a few.

One of the things that interests me greatly when becoming interested in one's work is always learning about their lives as people. It's as if you are sitting on a park bench observing life, studying the humanity around you and the interesting lives that are out there. It is the small accounts of people's everyday life that I find fascinating. Over the years my interest has been perked by different people and who they were and everybody is different, for the most part, and each story interesting. I remember reading about Glenn Gould, the famous pianist who would go to the same restaurant in Toronto every night and order the same dish off the menu, scrambled eggs. I love that! Of course I then started to wonder how the scrambled eggs were cooked, with clarified butter and salt and wondered if that played any part into the strokes that killed him at the young age of 50. I remember reading a 1929 biography of Michelangelo and how he would sleep in the cloths and shoes he wore that day, eating not out of pleasure but simply to survive and then went on to live into his 80's which back then was rare. Benjamin Franklin once said that if you want a long life than eat small meals. He was obviously wise beyond his years. Cicero the ancient philosopher was terribly concerned during his lifetime about how his work would be received long after he was dead and gone. Many of us in life wonder if we will leave a lasting mark in this world. Some people are interested in leaving something that will be recognized by a large population though some people only care to be remembered in their immediate circle, an intimate remembrance through family stories and scrap books or paintings they may have done hanging anonymously in private collections of descendants never to be seen by the prying eyes of the hungry art world. There is the story of how Van Gogh loved to eat in the same restaurant everyday and when in season loved to order the fried fish which he claimed was the best in the world. Mozart for example was extremely vain about his hair and was always aware of how it was tended. These little tidbits of great people bring out the humanity in them. Otherwise they are simply songs, or poster images or slight of tongues. Stories of Shakespeare indicate that he was a savvy business man when not writing investing in real estate and enjoyed having a laugh and a beer in the local pub. He was just a human being with a larger than life mind. Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, revered in academic circles were terrible at academics themselves. You are probably familiar of story of Einstein being so poor at his studies that he wasn't admitted into an institution of higher learning. Before Isaac Newton stumbled upon Calculus he was a miserable failure. He failed at school and nearly bankrupt his father's farm. William Porter better known as short story writer O Henry became tired of his life as a regular working man, struggling with his writing and fled down to Honduras for adventure and a change in lifestyle. F Scott Fitzgerald of The Great Gatsby fame was conscripted into World War I and was so troubled about being killed before having left behind a literary mark he quickly put together an early first novel which was eventually rejected by Scribner and Sons. Luckily for him the war ended before he was deployed and he went on to have a successful career as an author before suffering a massive heart attack at the age of 44. If you think you are the only ones out there who have struggled or been kicked around by life in any facet of it, be assured that all those people who you look at and say, "I wish I had their lives," once lived a life like you. They enjoyed simple things and had anxieties and frustrations and broken hearts and kept pursuing their dreams until they reached the stars, though some perished before they were ever recognized for their brilliance.

Alex Katz for ten years struggled to find his own style but eventually did and it is a wonderful style for him and enjoyed by millions of people around the globe. Go check it out, jump into his world for a while.