Red Coat

This final preparatory cartoon for the painting Red Coat (1982, Whitney Museum of American Art) illustrates the last step in Alex Katz’s very traditional working process, a method that can be traced back to the Renaissance. Katz begins his portraits with a series of preparatory sketches from life. In these sketches, Katz experiments with gesture and works out ideas for the finished composition. Katz then creates a small painting of the subject, consolidating the ideas he has explored in the previous sketches. A finished drawing in which the artist resolves all of the remaining compositional and lighting issues is made from the painted sketch and enlarged into a cartoon. The cartoon is transferred by poking holes along the lines of the drawing with a pouncing wheel. It is placed on the canvas, and dry pigment is pressed through the holes in the drawing, transferring the lines onto the canvas. Ultimately, because its composition is so carefully plotted out, the work has an intentionally limited sense of spontaneity.