Ukiyo-e Elements In Alex Katz's Paintings

Contemporary artist Alex Katz was born in 1927 in new york,USA.He is one of the artists with the highest personal style identification in painting since the 20 th century.At the juncture of modern American art and traditional realistic art,Katz's complanated picture is a complex under the influence of oriental art,color thoughts and various modern arts.Katz does not agree with critic Greenberg's autocratic theory of advocating complete abstraction.He chooses concrete creation under the simple presentation of his works.Katz chose concrete creation while simplifying his artistic works.He could find highly generalized,direct and tensive complanation in complex and changeable objective things to express his ideas and the meaning given by the pictures.His works were influenced by strong Japanese Ukiyo-e artistic elements and inspired by them in terms of color,composition and theme.Katz became an artist different from pop art and abstract expressionism in the flood of modern art sweeping the United States.This article mainly elaborates from three aspects: first,from Katz's living background and the two lines of Ukiyo-e art's introduction into American art: one line is the direct influence of Japanese native art;The other line is the curved influence of the indirect learning of American art from European art.In the second aspect,the author makes an in-depth analysis and analogy with Ukiyo-e's artistic language from the three aspects of Katz's art itself,including complanation,composition and light color.Finally,in Katz's paintings,the author thinks about the contemporary significance of Ukiyo-e elements in Katz's painting language,focusing on the combination of abstract and concrete in the objective world and its derived new styles,as well as the blending of the hidden oriental art(mainly Ukiyo-e art in this article)and western art,which has important practical significance value.