Alex Katz at MoMA: A Painter for all Seasons

It's always a pleasure when the familiar is tweaked just enough to provide a refreshing new perspective on what we thought we knew. That pleasure is doubled in a show at the Museum of Modern Art that revivifies a familiar artist and a familiar theme. The artist is Alex Katz, whose portraits, with simple yet vibrant planes of color, have made him instantly recognizable. The theme is the four seasons, a perennial subject tackled by everyone from Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Nicolas Poussin to Marc Chagall and Wendy Red Star.