The Black Dress, 1960
Information about the artwork
- MaterialOil on canvas
- Dimensions183.5 x 214.5 x 5.5 cm
- Inventory numberUAB 206
- On viewGround floor
- Copyright© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn [2024]. Photo: Haydar Koyupinar, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich
More about the artwork
In “The Black Dress,” Katz’s wife Ada appears six times in a frieze-like composition, each time wearing the same elegant black cocktail dress. If Katz’s repetition of the same figure alludes to the temporality of film and photography (similar to the seriality of Andy Warhol’s portraits of Marilyn, Liz, and Jackie, created only a few years later), the multiple points of overlap and intersection between the figures challenge the notion that the painting presents either a sequence of stills or a mechanical repetition of the same image. Instead, Katz’s six Adas are interwoven into a single, simultaneous scene, spatially grounded by the inclusion in the painting of Katz’s own 1959 portrait of the poet James Schuyler. In this collage-like approach, “The Black Dress” anticipates many of Katz’s later group portraits, which recombine studies of individual figures into more spatially complex scenes of social interaction.
