Alex Katz interview 'This is the end game. It’s just sleep and paint’

The 96-year-old is opening an ambitious show in Venice with some of his largest paintings to date.

'Katz has always seen himself as part of the arc of art history. He began painting large in the 1960s in part because he saw it as an opportunity to go toe-to-toe with Matisse and Picasso. “Picasso was a great painter, but not over six feet,” he says. “You are with and against all painters, you know? You look at painters and you have to see where the cracks are and go there.”' – Julia Halperin