CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/10/2021

Monochrome chic in 'Alex Katz: Beauty'

Featured spreads are from Beauty, the elegant new clothbound collection of recent close-up, black-and-white print portraits by Alex Katz, newly released from Karma Books, New York and Lococo Fine Art Publisher, St. Louis. Bookending a gorgeously-printed plate section are meditations on beauty by noted art writers Jarrett Earnest and Carter Ratcliff, who conducts a dialogue with Beauty. One section reads: “And what about beauty? What does it turn the world into?
Nothing, said Beauty.
Beauty turns the world into nothing?
Let me put it another way. Beauty does not turn anything into anything else. It is not a transformative agent. It is not an agent. Which might be hard for you to understand, you’re so infatuated with your sense of agency, as you call it. But if you could get over yourself for a moment you’d see that world and beauty are synonyms.”