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'Chuck Close' (born 'Charles Thomas Close' July 5, 1940, Monroe, Washington)[1] is an American painter and photographer who found fame as a photorealistic before a catastrophic blood clot left him almost paralyzed. Since that point he has continued to pursue painting through a new and innovative style.
Most of his early works are very large portraits based on photographs (Photorealism or Hyperrealism technique). In 1962, he received his B.A. from the University of Washington in Seattle. He then attended graduate school at Yale University, where he received his MFA in 1964. After Yale, he lived in Europe for a while on a Fulbright grant. When he returned to the US, he worked as an art teacher at the University of Massachusetts. In 1969 his work was included in the Whitney Biennial. His first one man show was in 1970. Close's work was first exhibited at the New York Museum of Modern Art in early 1973.
Close has often returned to the same photos to paint over and over again with different techniques. One photo of Philip Glass was included in his black and white series in 1969, redone with water colors in 1977, again redone with stamp pad and fingerprints in 1978, and also done as gray handmade paper in 1982.
In 1988, Close had a spinal artery collapse, on the day he was to give a speech at an art awards ceremony. He felt ill beforehand, asked to be first, gave his speech, then painfully went to a hospital across the street. A few hours later he was a quadriplegic and his painting career might have been terminated.
However Close continued to paint with a brush held between his teeth, creating large portraits in low-resolution grid squares created by an assistant. Viewed from afar, these squares appear as a single, unified image which attempt photo-reality, albeit in pixelated form. Eventually Close managed to recover some movement in his arm and legs, and now paints with a brush strapped to his hand.
To create his grid work copies of photos, Close puts a grid on the photo and on the canvas and copies cell by cell. Typically, each square within the grid is filled with roughly executed regions of color (usually painted rings on a contrasting background) which give the cell a perceived 'average' hue which makes sense from a distance. His first tools for this included an airbrush, rags, razor blade, and an eraser mounted on a power drill. His first picture with this method was ''Big Self Portrait'', a black and white enlargement of his face to a 107.5 in by 83.5 in (2.73 m by 2.12 m) canvas, made in over four months in 1968. He made seven more black and white portraits during this period. He has been quoted as saying that he used such diluted paint in the airbrush that all eight of the paintings were made with a single tube of mars black acrylic.
Later work has branched into non-rectangular grids, topographic map style regions of similar colors, CMYK color grid work, and using larger grids to make the cell by cell nature of his work obvious even in small reproductions -- the ''Big Self Portrait'' is so finely done that even a full page reproduction in an art book is still indistinguishable from a regular photograph.
Close's work titled ''Kiki'', completed in 1993, took about four months to complete.
Close currently lives and paints in Bridgehampton, New York.
★ Philip Glass
★ Nancy Graves
★ Alex Katz
★ Kate Moss
★ John Roy
★ Richard Serra
★ Cindy Sherman
★ The Portrait Now
★ The Portraits Speak: Chuck Close in Conversation with 27 of his subjects, , Bartman, William, A.R.T. Press, New York, 1997,
★ Chuck Close Up Close, , Jan, Greenberg, DK Publishing, 1998,
★ "Close Call" By Jon Marmor
★ Chuck Close at the Walker Art Center
★ Smithsonian Archives of American Art: Interview, 1987
★ Chuck Close: Process & Collaboration
★ Habits of Disbelief: Chuck Close by John Haber
★ One hour interview with Charlie Rose at Google Video (March 15, 2007)
★ Book Review of "A Couple Ways of Doing Something"
| Contents |
| Life and work |
| Some of his subjects |
| See also |
| References |
| External links |
Life and work
Most of his early works are very large portraits based on photographs (Photorealism or Hyperrealism technique). In 1962, he received his B.A. from the University of Washington in Seattle. He then attended graduate school at Yale University, where he received his MFA in 1964. After Yale, he lived in Europe for a while on a Fulbright grant. When he returned to the US, he worked as an art teacher at the University of Massachusetts. In 1969 his work was included in the Whitney Biennial. His first one man show was in 1970. Close's work was first exhibited at the New York Museum of Modern Art in early 1973.
Close has often returned to the same photos to paint over and over again with different techniques. One photo of Philip Glass was included in his black and white series in 1969, redone with water colors in 1977, again redone with stamp pad and fingerprints in 1978, and also done as gray handmade paper in 1982.
In 1988, Close had a spinal artery collapse, on the day he was to give a speech at an art awards ceremony. He felt ill beforehand, asked to be first, gave his speech, then painfully went to a hospital across the street. A few hours later he was a quadriplegic and his painting career might have been terminated.
However Close continued to paint with a brush held between his teeth, creating large portraits in low-resolution grid squares created by an assistant. Viewed from afar, these squares appear as a single, unified image which attempt photo-reality, albeit in pixelated form. Eventually Close managed to recover some movement in his arm and legs, and now paints with a brush strapped to his hand.
To create his grid work copies of photos, Close puts a grid on the photo and on the canvas and copies cell by cell. Typically, each square within the grid is filled with roughly executed regions of color (usually painted rings on a contrasting background) which give the cell a perceived 'average' hue which makes sense from a distance. His first tools for this included an airbrush, rags, razor blade, and an eraser mounted on a power drill. His first picture with this method was ''Big Self Portrait'', a black and white enlargement of his face to a 107.5 in by 83.5 in (2.73 m by 2.12 m) canvas, made in over four months in 1968. He made seven more black and white portraits during this period. He has been quoted as saying that he used such diluted paint in the airbrush that all eight of the paintings were made with a single tube of mars black acrylic.
Later work has branched into non-rectangular grids, topographic map style regions of similar colors, CMYK color grid work, and using larger grids to make the cell by cell nature of his work obvious even in small reproductions -- the ''Big Self Portrait'' is so finely done that even a full page reproduction in an art book is still indistinguishable from a regular photograph.
Close's work titled ''Kiki'', completed in 1993, took about four months to complete.
Close currently lives and paints in Bridgehampton, New York.
Some of his subjects
★ Philip Glass
★ Nancy Graves
★ Alex Katz
★ Kate Moss
★ John Roy
★ Richard Serra
★ Cindy Sherman
See also
★ The Portrait Now
References
★ The Portraits Speak: Chuck Close in Conversation with 27 of his subjects, , Bartman, William, A.R.T. Press, New York, 1997,
★ Chuck Close Up Close, , Jan, Greenberg, DK Publishing, 1998,
External links
★ "Close Call" By Jon Marmor
★ Chuck Close at the Walker Art Center
★ Smithsonian Archives of American Art: Interview, 1987
★ Chuck Close: Process & Collaboration
★ Habits of Disbelief: Chuck Close by John Haber
★ One hour interview with Charlie Rose at Google Video (March 15, 2007)
★ Book Review of "A Couple Ways of Doing Something"
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