Chuck Close

This artist is contemporary and in a drawing class I took 2 years ago I became exraordinarily transfixed on him. He's an american painter born in 1940 who achieved incredible recognition through his massive-scale paintings and his work using photorealism and hyperreailsm. He is the amazing Chuck Close.

Photorealism is the genre of painting based on making a painting from a photograph; it began in the late 1960's. It eveolved from pop art as a reaction to Abstract Expressionism.

Hyperrealism is simply considered to be an advancement of photorealism. Hyperrealist painters and sculptors use photographic images as a reference source from which to create a more definitive and detailed rendering, one that unlike Photorealism, often is narrative and emotive in its depictions. Photorealist painters tended to imitate photographic images, often omitting or abstracting certain finite detail in order to maintain a consistent overall pictorial design.

Now, Cuck Close is a fascinating individual and his story powerful and sad. The beginning is semi-standard. He graduated Yale with an MFA and taught art at the University of Massachusetts. His first one-man show was at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1970.

His work was innovative. I studied and observed and learned all about his technique. 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 consisting of 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.

Just look at the amazing detail and handiwork. Its diffcult to imagine it isn't a photograph. His work is calculated and masterful. I mean this painting is 9ft x 7ft so I can only imagine how long it took, about 4 months apparently. He used acrylic paint and an airbrush to include every detail. This was the first of his large-scale works and he just got more outrageous and daring from this point.

This piece and detail is Mark (1978-1979). This one took him 14 months to complete, he used acyrlic paint and applied it in a series of airbrushed layers that basically imitated how printers work today. Just look at the size and the detail. I can't get over the level of skill. I'm just blown away.

Look at that iris! Its phenomenal and unprecedented.

He soon implemented another technique.

This one is Lucas (1986-1987).
Just as beautiful as the one before, but stylistically more interesting. It's quite reminscent of the "pixelated" look with overblown digital photographs, which makes this idea more than impressive. If you look close enough at the detail yuo can evn see the pencil lines. Some would say it's sloppy, but I find it charming.

I have tried to utilize this technique (feel free to give criticism):

It has no name since it as purely practice for me (2007).

I think I did a decent job at imitation, but my medium was oil pastels.

Close's story only gets more interesting from this point. On December 7, 1988 he went to New York to give an art award, but he felt a pain in his chest. He managed to give his speech and then he quickly ran to the hospital. By the time he had been admitted and examined he was paralyzed form he neck down and it turned out he had a rare spinal artery collapse. Close would, so intimately, call this day "The Event". Close was in rehab for several months strengthening his muscles; he soon had slight movement in his arms and could walk, yet only for a few steps. He has relied on a wheelchair since.

Close continued to paint on with a brush strapped onto his wrist with tape, creating large portraits in low-resolution grid squares created by an assistant. I can hardly fathom how difficult physically and emotionaly it had to be for him. He could no longer paint as meticulously as before and no longer could he achieve that very fine detail. His work was still beautiful and extraordinary.

He painted many people who are household names today. They include people like Bill Clinton, Kate Moss, Willem Dafoe, and Brad Pitt, along with his wife and children.

I strongly encourage anyone to view his work. Simply wonderful.

Here are some of his paintings, and you will be amazed:

Maggie (1996).

This is the one tried to imitate.

John (1971-1072).
Your mind was blown, right?

Eric (1990).