AllMovie

This German-produced 2003 documentary introduces viewers to Maine-based American artist Alex Katz - an iconoclastic talent who bucked the trends of modern art throughout his 50+-year career and exuded his own inimitable style of flat, ascetic realism. Documentarist Heinz Peter Schwerfel visits Katz's studio to witness him laboring over his largest and most ambitious creation to date - a 32' mural called The Black Book; Schwerfel subsequently cuts between archival footage of Katz at work, footage of his subjects vis-à-vis the eventual paintings, and incisive interviews with Schwerfel's colleagues. The documentary ends with a work-by-work onscreen gallery of Katz's paintings.