THE UNUSUAL ART OF CHUCK CLOSE by Libby Clay

THE UNUSUAL ART OF CHUCK CLOSE

by Libby Clay

Keith II (83.31), by Chuck Close, has been delighting Gallery visitors from the first day of its installation.  People have been sighted peering at the work up close, then backing across the room to see how Keith comes more into focus, revealing more and  detail.  Invariably there are smiles as the transformation occurs.

Close has been categorized as a "hyper-realist."  He works from photographs, usually of family or friends.  He changes the size of the photography, divides it into squares or grids, and then translates each grid of the photograph onto a canvas upon which he has penciled a matching grid.  Painstakingly he applies the paint, square by square. Then his work is often reproduced in a series of prints.

The hyper-realism results from the enlargement of the photograph and from the nature of photography itself.  Since the camera picks up a wealth of details, Close long ago decided to use photography of heads only.  Thus he reduced the content of what he had to transfer to canvas.

As the artist began to work with larger and larger photographs, the details also became larger, until every eyelash, every freckle, every pore became visible, unedited, in the painting.  Close's paintings often reveal the limitations of the photographic medium, i.e., the nose may be in focus while the eyes are not.  The result is a large portrait (translated from an enlarged photograph) that appears " real than real,"  realistic than the human eye can actually perceive.

Charles Close was born in 1949 near Tacoma, Washington.  As a child with undiagnosed serious learning disabilities, he received comments like "dumb,” “lazy,” and “mind wanders" on his report card.  Studying was an ordeal, but he figured out a way to concentrate.  "I filled the bathtub to the brim with hot water.  A board across the tub held my book.  I would shine a spotlight on it.  The rest of the bathroom was dark.  Sitting in the hot water, I would read each page of the book five times out loud so I could hear it.  If I stayed up half the night…I could learn.  The next morning I could spit back just enough information to get by on the test."

Art was the medium through which he could excel, and he spent hours by himself, drawing.  It was the first thing he was good at, and it made him feel special.  Against the odds, he attended the University of Washington and the Yale University School of Art.  He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study in Europe and then taught art at the University of Massachusetts.  Close decided to give up teaching to devote all his time to being an artist.

With his wife Leslie, a sculptor, he moved to New York City to a huge, unheated loft in SoHo.  It was at this time that he decided to concentrate on heads—giant heads, "because that is the first thing that most people look at when meeting someone."  Although Chuck Close has stayed with painting heads, he has experimented with new ways of painting them, for he feels that the greatest enemy for an artist is “repeating yourself once you get good at it.”

In the 1960s he worked in black and white.  In the early 1970s he began to photograph friends in color.  Since color images are made up of three primary hues—red, blue and yellow—he had the photographs separated into these three colors before he began to paint.  It was slow and painstaking, because each painting was painted three times, one color on top of another.  It often took over a year to finish one painting. The canvasses were so large that he built a desk and chair on the prongs of a forklift (which he called "Big Joe") so that he could raise or lower himself to reach the whole canvas.

In 1988 "the event" happened. Close suffered a rare spinal artery collapse, which left him paralyzed from the neck down.  His career seemed finished.  But with the same tenacity he showed as a youngster, he spent months in rehabilitation and eventually gained partial use of his arms.  Today, seated in his wheelchair, he paints with a brush strapped to his hand.  His little squares have become bursts of color, and there is a new vibrancy to his art.  He is celebrating being "back to work."

Source: Edward Lucie-Smith, "Chuck Close Up Close" in  Art Now.