Supermodel is really good person, ughhhhhhhhh.

Alex Katz and Christy Turlington both found out early on how to make fashion pay their bills. Christy wears it around on silly looking sidewalks, and Alex paints women like Christy. The funny thing is that the fashion part is an illusion on both sides. Christy made her name modeling for Calvin Klein, and having done a bunch of research I’m convinced it isn’t the underwear that makes her look like that. Ditto Katz’s paintings, his fashionable women are usually just wearing a black dress or something, still they look so well-dressed and stylish. The bad news is that the only way to look like that is to get Alex to paint you, the good news is he paints every single day so there’s still hope!

Katz’s work is easily compared to Andy Warhol and his pop art homies, but Katz has been playing the bright colors and flat shapes game since before Warhol had white hair. And Katz isn’t just interested in ephemerality (even though he sometimes says he is), he also likes people and personality and romance. He’s actually painted Turlington a bunch of times, and they collaborated with Puma on Christy’s Nuala line of pre-athleisure yoga clothes. Their decades of collaboration means that this portrait of the Latinx model/activist/mother manages to suggest that she is way more than simply a really famous model.

Christy directed a film about maternal deaths and the poor state of maternal healthcare called No Woman, No Cry and founded a non-profit dedicated to the issue called Every Mother Counts in 2010. It’s activism work like this that landed her spots on Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential and Glamour’s Women of the Year lists. It’s her passion and dedication to making an impact that put Christy in the National Portrait Gallery, and also probably why her and Katz are homies.