40 × 55 9/10 in | 101.5 × 142 cm
Edition of 60
“Flags of Light unites three of Alex Katz’s most iconic series in a radiant meditation on beauty, form, and stillness.”
Flags of Light brings together three iconic series by Alex Katz -Coca-Cola Girl, Straw Hat, and Yellow Flag- in a striking visual dialogue where color, form, and gesture become signposts of both beauty and contemplation. Through a bold use of light and flat color fields, Katz distills his subjects into pure presence.
The Coca-Cola Girl paintings present stylized female profiles set against vivid red backgrounds, echoing mid-century American advertising while maintaining a cool emotional distance. These women are not portraits but icons-poised, self-contained, and emblematic of a certain cultural gaze. In contrast, Straw Hat introduces a quieter moment: the figure's eyes are closed, her face softly lit, immersed in a personal interiority. It is a gesture of retreat, a silent suspension in time.
Yellow Flag offers a floral counterpoint. Bright yellow irises unfold over a stark black background, their shapes mirroring the contours and rhythms of the female body. The flowers become silent dancers-visual echoes of the human figures seen earlier. In Katz's world, form does not imitate life; it refracts it, refines it, and lets it breathe.
Together, these works form a meditation on surface and substance, abstraction and intimacy. The "flags" in Flags of Lightare bodies, gestures, petals-waving not in wind, but in light. They are quiet signals that invite the viewer to slow down and look again.