R.B. Kitaj

In late spring 2003, L.A. Louver presented R.B. Kitaj’s recent paintings and works on paper in an exhibition titled Los Angeles Pictures. Kitaj had created the exhibition through an outpouring of activity during the preceding three years. In preparing for the exhibition, I was privileged to visit Kitaj in his house and sunny studio located in the Westwood neighbourhood of Los Angeles. On each occasion, I enjoyed a finely choreographed tour at exactly 4:30 p.m., the hour he marked to receive visitors in his highly structured day. To enter Kitaj’s home was, in a sense, to enter his art: an environment dense with alluring visual cues — paintings, drawings, photographs, letters, books — ordered disorder that was impossible to absorb with a casual glance.

-Elizabeth East