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Jonathan Langseth

ARH351

Rosenfeld

Chuck Close: Four Perspectives

In what follows I offer four approaches to the art of Chuck Close, an artist with distinct

transitions in the development of his work. The approaches will be 1) historical, 2) formal, 3)

theoretical, and 4) Critical. I limit discussion to his non-photographic works of portraiture.

Through a discussion of only one theme, and in the case of Close this is the most prominent

theme, we gain an ordered perspective of the progression of his artistic development. Although a

complete and consistent account of any artist is an impossibility, it is my hope that the collective

discussion that follows gives a well rounded and thorough account of the art of Chuck Close.

1) An Historical Account

Modern technology has made it now possible for any person with access to the internet to

acquire a near infinite amount of information instantly. To acquire a basic biographical account

of Chuck Close, biography being that which links an individual to history, one need onlygoogle

his name; and so I did to collect basic information regarding Closes life.1 Born July 5, 1940, in

Monroe, Washington. After receiving his B.A. from the University of Seattle, Close went on to

graduate school at Yale, followed by a year long stint in Europe on a Fulbright Scholarship.

1The remainder of the paragraph is taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Close

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Upon returning to the United States, Close Became an art teacher at the University of

Massachusetts. By the age of thirty, Close was already exhibiting his work in prominent

galleries.

Closes early paintings have been called photorealism or super-realism because they

depict very large, up close portraits that look, from almost any distance, like a photograph. IT is

here that we reach first point at which biography and history meet. Closes technique is only

possible after the invention of photography. The existence of photography, as Benjamin notes in

Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, offers new perspectives, forms of manipulation, and

forms of consciousness. The perspective of Closes subjects is in fact photographical, only

available through the optics of a camera lens.

By the time Close was thirty years old, the history of art had witnessed the avant-garde,

surrealism, abstract expressionism, and many other movements and styles that stretched the of

boundaries of what constituted accurate representation, until the privileged status of

representation itself was put under trial in non-objective painting. In response, Close chose to

offer portrayals so real that discernment that the painting is not a photograph is difficult.

This response to the question of representation evident in the art world at the time can be

seen as a synthesis of the historically dialectical motion of art. Art dances with its definition,

with any attempt to pin it down. Closes photorealist paintings bring the dialectical relation of

representation and non-representation into synthesis by responding to the historical move away

from representation with works that represent visual reality with an unparallel precision.

After a spinal artery collapse in 1988, Close became quadriplegic. He continued painting,

holding the brush in his mouth. The resulting paintings were very different from his earlier

photorealist work. Close continued painting large, close-up portraits of people, but began using

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small, colored, shapes positioned on a grid, to create his images.

As a means towards making evident the change in Closes works, and as the main focus

of the present and following sections, I would like to select five paints or Close. They are:

1. Study for Self-Portrait. 1968. Gelatin-silver print, ink, pencil, and pressure-sensitive tape on

board, 18 5/8 x 13 3/8

2.Large Mark Pastel. 1978. Pastel and watercolor on washed paper mounted on paper, 55 3/4 x

43 1/4"

3. Georgia. 1984. Handmade paper, 56 x 45"

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4.Dorothea. 1995. Oil on canvas. 102 x 84"

5.Emma/Woodcut. 2002. Ukiyo-e woodcut, 43 x 35

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This selection of paintings is representative of the forty-plus years of Closes career as an artist.

One can get a sense of both the continuity and distinctions that evolved from the 1960s to

present day.

2) A Formal Account

Let us begin with Closes Study for Self-Portrait. Created with mostly ink and pencil, this

piece could easily be mistaken for a photograph of the artist. From the wild motion of his hair to

the reflection of light on his glasses, to the cigarette smoke trailing upward from his mouththe

precision and skill required to create this work of art are evident of Closes genius. To have such

precision, Close used grids to section off both the photograph from which he worked and the

work itself.2To make his large-scale portraits, Close first selects a photograph and overlays it

with a grid. He then transposes the image square by square to another surface-be it canvas, paper,

or printing plate. When filling in his grids, he builds the final likeness through marks that can

include dots of pigment, inked fingerprints, etched lines, or vibrant brushstrokes.3 This work is

2To view the grid see: http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE

%3A1156&page_number=1&template_id=1&sort_order=13

http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/6aa/6aa176.htm

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exemplar of photorealism. One has difficulty in distinguishing whether the work is a blown up

photograph or made by pen and pencil.

From a distance,Large Mark Pastelsimilarly resembles a photograph, albeit one out of

focus. Yet as one closes the distance between him or herself and the work, it becomes evident

that the work is constructed out of small circular sections of pastel and watercolor. This work,

unlike Study for Self-Portrait, is in color. Close uses the same grid process to create this work as

his other portraits.

Georgia is one of Closes works made with black and gray fingerprints on a white

background. With this work we see Closes move away from precise representation to an

experimental method of creating images out of non-conventional means, namely his fingerprints.

But he is still able to capture what can be called alternatively the essence or expression of a

human. Whatever formal properties are necessary for such a feat, Close has captured them.

Dorothea was made after Close became quadriplegic. This work is representative of the

kinds of portraitures Close began painting with his mouth after losing the use of his arms and

hands.Dorothea is highly interesting in its degree of photorealism and its simultaneous slipping

away from realism into the abstract. This work would indeed be classified as abstract, but, and

this in terms of its formal properties, the work suggests the lack of border and defined line, and

instead a blurring of boundary, an ambiguity of vision.

Emma/Woodcutis a collaborative piece undertaken with Yasuyuki (Yasu) Shibata. Here

is a description of the process:

The Printmaking Process

Yasu made color separations for each color that Chuck Close had created in his

original painting. He ultimately carved 27 blocks out of a combination of basswood and

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maple plywood that would eventually carry 113 colors and be printed 132 times for each

sheet of paper. The process of carving the blocks took approximately 20 weeks. Prior to

printing, the Shiramine paper was calendered and hand sized with Nikawa which issimilar to rabbit skin glue.

In a weekly cycle, 30 pieces of paper that were to be printed that week were

dampened on Sunday, kept in plastic during the week to maintain their moisture, andfinally placed on the drying rack at the end of the week. Each day, Yasu was able to hand

print two to three runs on each batch of 30 prints.

The inks were prepared by Yasu from ground dry pigments, mixed with water andkept refrigerated. The area of the woodblock that was to be printed was dampened each

time with a brush before the ink was applied. Yasu next applied the pigments from a

bowl to the block with a brush. A second brush called a hake was then used to spread the

ink to its proper consistency onto the block.The blocks were registered with small notches cut into the corner of each block.

Yasu then using a baren printed each inked area of each block. He repeated this process

132 times for each print.4

In each of the paintings Close made use of grids. This sectioning off of various sections

of a work in order to better organize ones act of creating is not unique to Close and may even be

considered essential to that act of making art, but Closes style is and has been consistently

unique in his use of grids as a visually apparent aspect of his work.

3) A Theoretical Account

It has already been noted that Closes work affords a unique dialectical synthesis of

representation and non-representation. But in relation to this it should be further noted that the

evolution of Closes work has its own dialectical progression. From his Study for Self-Portraitof

1968 toEmma/Woodcutin 2002, there is both a level of consistency and change. The most

evident struggle Close had to comes to terms with was his physical impairmentthe struggle

between new and challenging limitations and the desire to express pushed Close in new

directions with his art. But throughout his career we can see another, more experientially based,

4http://www.paceprints.com/printshop/FeaturedPrints/Close-1851.asp

For a visual of the process see: http://www.chuckclose.coe.uh.edu/process/emma_b_1.htm

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progression in which Close pulls his work into ever new dimensions of perception.

In his portraitures, Close found a methodology with which to test the boundaries of

limitations. All construction requires limitations of some sort, at the very least some pulling

thread which brings the work of art together into a whole. Even the most avant-garde and

abstract of works are unified in some fashion; and this unification is evidence of some form of

limitation imposed on the construction and presentation of a work of art. As noted Close used

grids to break his works into smaller units to be worked on in turn. At first this was intended to

allow Close to paint large portraitures photographic in appearance. But as Close continued his

artistic endeavors, he began playing off the grids to create representations somehow

simultaneously representative and obscured. We see not only a face and the expression of what it

is like to be human in the work, but something more, possibly unable to be expressed in words,

the is communicated to the attentive spectator.

In his later work, such asEmma, we still see the face ad intuit the expressive quality of

the work, but we equally see an organized arrangement of colored squares and globular shapes.

The shapes not only construct the appearance of a face but at the same time seem to be breaking

it apart into fragments. This contradiction, the concurrent construction and deconstruction of the

representation or subject matter, is left for the spectator to synthesize how ever he or she is able.

Closes work also articulates the determinacy of distance. His earlier works appear

photographic at nearly all distances. His later works give the appearance of accurate, photo-like

representation at a distance, but up close break down into the patterned use of shapes Close

chooses as means of creation.

4) A Critical Account

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The portraits of Close are close-up, larger than life portrayals of humanity. Their size and

closeness express to the attentive spectator an intimate glimpse of the human conditionthe

strife, joy, toll of life, etc. Their presence acts as a reminder of or awaking to ones relation to

ones self and to others. In Closes work we can see the lines of the face, the fear in the eyes, and

the smile on the lips of his subjects expressed more loudly and boldly than typically noticed

throughout the course of everyday life. The face has been the source of the most intimate

understanding of humanityit is, so to speak, the inlet into ones souland Close depicts this

intimacy and understanding convincingly.

Closes work from the Seventies onward continually pushes the limit of this loud and

bold expression of human understanding. The use of varying shapes constructed with no

definable border attests to the philosophical belief that an individual is not what he or she is

without the support of and interplay with the world, the environment, other people, objects, etc.

Emma is an example in which the background and foreground are indiscernible, thus suggesting

either the reciprocity or concurrency of self and other, the world as extension of self and the self

as existing in, of , and with the world.

Closes art recognizes the myth of the autonomous, detached individual who faces a

world distinct from his or herself. The study of his work results in the blurring of subject and

object. In so doing Closes work aides in disrupting the ideals of humanity at root in the current

commodification of society, of individual as consumer and competitor in a world of each against

all. Close recognizes the lack of fine lines that divide self from other, a recognition in support of

the ideal of cooperation as opposed to competition.

Although Closes works have a high market value and are thus apart of the

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commodification of society, to experience one of his works is to experience the connectedness

and interrelatedness of all things, that everything is bound together in making each part what it

is. Like Closes paintings, the world to is a whole out of its part, like the various sections of

Closes grids. And like the grids Close uses in his later works, we can not easily recognize where

one conscious individual starts and another stops beyond mere empirical superficialities. Close

says his use of grids is "a creative process that could be interrupted repeatedly without

damaging the final product, in which the segmented structure was never intended to be

disguised."5 The work, as was previously noted, both constructs and deconstructs the subject

(both the subject of the painting and the subjecting witnessing the painting).

In general, all of Closes works are evidence to his extreme talent, patience, and

understanding.

5http://www.chuckclose.coe.uh.edu/life/index.html

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