R.B.Kitaj: Pictures with Commentary, Pictures without Commentary

Artist: R.B.Kitaj 
Author: R.B.Kitaj and A.R.Orage 
Publisher: Marlborough Fine Art 
Date: 1963 
Condition: Printed card covers, a little fading as seems usual for this volume and some light handling marks, otherwise a tidy, little used copy of this early Kitaj catalogue.

The catalogue of Kitaj's first solo exhibition presents an art that is quite unlike anything else around at the time. The canvases included several images, including collage elements, and drew on a wide variety of source material, and they are still, at the space of over six decades, still complicated and sometimes confusing to confront. 

Sharing some of the interests current in the work of RCA contemporaries like David Hockney, Kitaj's paintings nevertheless have a very strong narrative element that is often quite obscure, incorporating sources such as mass media, pre-existing imagery, handwriting and literary material.