LONDON (EJP)---American-Jewish painter Alex Katz is showing four of his major works in London’s West End...three very large paintings with varying subjects and one"...notable early and rare sculptures One Flight Up from 1968..."

In fact this admittedly major and influential work is less a sculpture (although it is free-standing) than a series of cut-out portraits busts painted on both sides, of a group of Manhattan party goers - they are based on a chest-high trestle table

Are they supposedly one floor up on an up-town terrace somewhere between 5th Ave and Lexington?

However as this work was created in 1968 where is the typical New York crowd...the ethic mix?

Where are the BoHo, Soho pseudo or otherwise artists,out of work actors and aspiring writers? Where are the interesting people and where are the Hippies? This is a gathering of bland suburbanites whose only problems are where can they park...this painting takes ordinariness as a superlative.

The White Shirt paintings from 1995-1996 shown here as a monumental portrait series is more interesting, five exremely good-looking Wall Street types all posed in identical positions,some with ties,some without,short dark or blonde hair,a shading of designer stubble (it must be Friday) and all as slim and elegant as the artist,now in his 80th year,himself.

Very Ralph Lauren or more likely Brookes Brothers. Their problem? Will the weather hold for sailing at the week-end?

The two landscapes,one ’Walking on the Beach’ shows an ordinary family walking on the beach and the most recent ,a poetic ’Winter Landscape’ (2006) shows bare trees losing the last of their leaves in a snowy and misty winter background. A serene,poignant and very beautiful painting.

At the Timothy Taylor Gallery, 15,Carlos Place,Mayfair, London W1.