Ann and Billy

Visible at the end of a short hallway at the DIA, Alex Katz’s Ann and Billy peer in various directions towards the edges of the painting’s frame. There is something about Katz’s signature style—matte, blocked into large swaths of color, his paint strokes completely smooth—that has always intrigued me. The flatness of the hair, skin, eyes, and expressions of Ann and Billy somehow build a luminous and remarkably graceful portrait of intimates.

Alex Katz. Ann and Billy, 1981; oil on canvas; 120 x 120 in. Courtesy of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Photo: Liz Glass.