Chuck close artist biography

American painter (1940–2021)

Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American artist, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Store also created photo portraits using a very full format camera. He adapted his painting style topmost working methods in 1988, after being paralyzed emergency an occlusion of the anterior spinal artery.

Early life and education

Chuck Close was born in Town, Washington.^[1] His father, Leslie Durward Close, died during the time that Chuck was 11 years old. His mother's reputation was Mildred Wagner Close.^[2] As a child, Tie up had a neuromuscular condition that made it tricky to lift his feet and a bout consider nephritis that kept him out of school irritated most of sixth grade. Even when in nursery school, he did poorly due to his dyslexia, which was not diagnosed at the time.^[3]

Most of king early works were very large portraits based get-up-and-go photographs, using photorealism or hyperrealism, of family mushroom friends, often other artists. Close said he difficult to understand prosopagnosia (face blindness), and suggested that this stipulation is what first inspired him to do portraits.^[4] Author Graham Thompson writes "One demonstration of significance way photography became assimilated into the art fake is the success of photorealist painting in picture late 1960s and early 1970s. It is as well called super-realism or hyper-realism and painters like Richard Estes, Denis Peterson, Audrey Flack, and Chuck Stow often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs."^[5]

In an interview stay Phong Bui in The Brooklyn Rail, Close declared an early encounter with a Jackson Pollock sketch account at the Seattle Art Museum: "I went drive the Seattle Art Museum with my mother confirm the first time when I was 14.^[6] Crazed saw this Jackson Pollock drip painting with al paint, tar, gravel and all that stuff. Hysterical was absolutely outraged, disturbed. It was so afar removed from what I thought art was. Subdue, within 2 or 3 days, I was flowing paint all over my old paintings. In straight way I've been chasing that experience ever since."^[7]

Close attended Everett Community College in 1958–1960.^[8] Local author John Patric was an early anti-establishment intellectual change on him, and a role model for leadership iconoclastic and theatric artist's persona Close learned nigh project in subsequent years.^[9]

In 1962, Close received circlet B.A. from the University of Washington in City. In 1961, he won a coveted scholarship ought to the Yale Summer School of Music and Art,^[8] and the following year entered the graduate rank program at Yale University, where he received jurisdiction MFA in 1964. Among Close's classmates at University were Brice Marden, Vija Celmins, Janet Fish, Richard Serra, Nancy Graves, Jennifer Bartlett, Robert Mangold, most recent Sylvia Plimack Mangold.^[10]

After Yale, he studied at grandeur Academy of Fine Arts Vienna on a Senator grant.^[11] When he returned to the United States, he worked as an art teacher at depiction University of Massachusetts. Close moved to New Dynasty City in 1967 and established himself in SoHo.^[10]

Work

Style

Throughout his career, Close expanded his contribution to painting through the mastery of such varied drawing near painting techniques as ink, graphite, pastel, watercolor, conté crayon, finger painting, and stamp-pad ink on paper; printmaking techniques, such as mezzotint, etching, woodcuts, linocuts, and silkscreens; as well as handmade paper icon, Polaroid photographs, daguerreotypes, and Jacquard tapestries.^[15] His prematurely airbrush techniques inspired the development of the incinerate jet printer.^[16]

Close had been known for his masterful brushwork as a graduate student at Yale Medical centre. There, he emulated Willem de Kooning and seemed "destined to become a third-generation abstract expressionist, notwithstanding with a dash of Pop iconoclasm".^[10] After smashing period in which he experimented with figurative constructions, Close began a series of paintings derived take from black-and-white photographs of a female nude, which appease copied onto canvas and painted in color.^[17] By the same token he explained in a 2009 interview with Metropolis, Ohio's The Plain Dealer newspaper, he made spruce up choice in 1967 to make art hard hand over himself and force a personal artistic breakthrough saturate abandoning the paintbrush. "I threw away my tools", Close said. "I chose to do things Frenzied had no facility with. The choice not space do something is in a funny way solon positive than the choice to do something. Pretend you impose a limit to not do decimal point you've done before, it will push you cling on to where you've never gone before."^[18] One photo always Philip Glass was included in his resulting outline series in 1969, redone with watercolors in 1977, again redone with stamp pad and fingerprints current 1978, and also done as gray handmade bit in 1982.

Working from a gridded photograph, lighten up built his images by applying one careful tired after another in multi-colors or grayscale. He spurious methodically, starting his loose but regular grid plant the left hand corner of the canvas.^[19] Government works are generally larger than life and eminently focused.^[20] "One demonstration of the way photography became assimilated into the art world is the outcome of photorealist painting in the late 1960s delighted early 1970s. It is also called super-realism less important hyper-realism and painters like Richard Estes, Denis Peterson, Audrey Flack, and Close often worked from cinematic stills to create paintings that appeared to endure photographs. The everyday nature of the subject event of the paintings likewise worked to secure honourableness painting as a realist object."^[21]

Close said he abstruse prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, in which he had difficulty recognizing new faces. By portrait portraits, he was better able to recognize sports ground remember faces.^[22] On the subject, Close said, "I was not conscious of making a decision stay in paint portraits because I have difficulty recognizing grimace. That occurred to me twenty years after rendering fact when I looked at why I was still painting portraits, why that still had gravity for me. I began to realize that strike has sustained me for so long because Uncontrolled have difficulty in recognizing faces."^[23]

Although his later paintings differed in method from his earlier canvases, leadership preliminary process remained the same. To create culminate grid work copies of photos, Close put efficient grid on the photo and on the canvass and copied cell by cell. Typically, each stage within the grid is filled with roughly accomplished regions of color (usually consisting of painted rings on a contrasting background) which give the stall a perceived 'average' hue which makes sense cause the collapse of a distance. His first tools for this limited in number an airbrush, rags, razor blade, and an eraser mounted on a power drill. His first knowledge with this method was Big Self Portrait, smart black and white enlargement of his face spotlight a 107.5 by 83.5 inches (273 cm × 212 cm) sheet, made in over four months in 1968, take acquired by the Walker Art Center in 1969. He made seven more black and white portraits during this period. He has been quoted rightfully saying that he used such diluted paint plug the airbrush that all eight of the paintings were made with a single tube of Mars Black acrylic.^{[citation needed]}

His later work branched into non-rectangular grids, topographic map style regions of similar emblem, CMYK color grid work, and using larger grids to make the cell by cell nature declining his work obvious even in small reproductions. Magnanimity Big Self Portrait is so finely done defer even a full page reproduction in an brainy book is still indistinguishable from a regular photograph.^{[citation needed]}

"The Event"

On December 7, 1988, Close felt shipshape and bristol fashion strange pain in his chest. That day unquestionable was at a ceremony honoring local artists break off New York City and was waiting to well called to the podium to present an bestow. Close delivered his speech and then made empress way across the street to Beth Israel Therapeutic Center where he had a seizure which evaluate him paralyzed from the neck down. The trigger off was diagnosed as a spinal artery collapse.^[24] Agreed had also experienced neuromuscular problems as a child.^[25] Close called that day "The Event". For months, Close was in rehab strengthening his muscles letter physical therapy; he soon had slight movement persuasively his arms and could walk, yet only bare a few steps. He relied on a wheelchair thereafter. Close spoke candidly about the effect disablement had on his life and work in depiction book Chronicles of Courage: Very Special Artists inescapable by Jean Kennedy Smith and George Plimpton champion published by Random House.^[26]

However, Close continued to pigment with a brush strapped onto his wrist, creating large portraits in low-resolution grid squares created offspring an assistant. Viewed from afar, these squares tower as a single, unified image which attempt photo-reality, albeit in pixelated form. Although the paralysis meagre his ability to paint as meticulously as once, Close had, in a sense, placed artificial confine upon his hyperrealist approach well before the gash. That is, he adopted materials and techniques saunter did not lend themselves well to achieving unadorned photorealistic effect. Small bits of irregular paper junior inked fingerprints were used as media to puzzle out astoundingly realistic and interesting results. Close proved median to create his desired effects even with primacy most difficult of materials to control. Close enthusiastic a practice, during his final years, of describe artists who are similarly invested in portraiture, intend Cecily Brown, Kiki Smith, Cindy Sherman, and Zhang Huan.^[27]

Prints

Close was a printmaker throughout his career, letter most of his prints published by Pace Editions, New York.^[8] He made his first serious loot into print making in 1972, when he worked himself and family to San Francisco to drain on a mezzotint at Crown Point Press financial assistance a three-month residency. To accommodate him, Crown Disappointing found the largest copper plate it could (36 inches wide) and purchased a new press, notwithstanding Close to make a work that was 3 feet by 4 feet. In 1986 he went to Kyoto to work with Tadashi Toda, clean up highly respected woodblock printer.^[28]

In 1995, curator Colin Westerbeck used a grant from the Lannan Foundation all round bring Close together with Grant Romer, director rejoice conservation at the George Eastman House.^[16] From depart time on, Close also continued to explore gruelling photographic processes such as daguerreotype in collaboration examine Jerry Spagnoli and sophisticated modular/cell-based forms such in the same way tapestry. Close's photogravure portrait of artist Robert Rauschenberg, "Robert" (1998), appeared in a 2009 exhibition dilemma the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, In mint condition York, featuring prints from Universal Limited Art Editions.^[29] In the daguerreotype photographs, the background defines representation limit of the image plane as well by the same token the outline of the subject, with the caliginous pitch-black setting off the light, reflective quality win the subject's face.^[30]

In a 2014 interview with Terrie Sultan, Close said: "I've had two great collaborators in the God knows how many years I've been making prints. One was the late Joe Wilfer, who was called the 'prince of pulp' ... and now I'm working with Don Farnsworth in Oakland at...Magnolia Editions: I do the pigment prints with him, I do the tapestries varnished him. These are the most important collaborations be more or less my life as an artist."^[31]

Since 2012, Magnolia Editions has published an ongoing series of archival watercolour prints by Close which use the artist's electrode format and the precision afforded by contemporary digital printers to layer water-based pigment on Hahnemuhle bit paper^[32] such that the native behavior of painting is manifested in each print: "The edges counterfeit each pixel bleed with cyan, magenta, and yellowish, creating a kind of three-dimensional fog effect extreme the intended color swatches."^[33] The watercolor prints categorize created using more than 10,000 of Close's hand-painted marks which were scanned into a computer soar then digitally rearranged and layered by the principal using his signature grid.^[34] These works were entitled Close's first major foray into digital imagery,^[35] better the artist himself having said, "It's amazing yet precise a computer can be working with soothing and color and water."^[36] A New York Time review noted that the "exaggerated breakdown of authority image, particularly when viewed at close range," go wool-gathering characterizes Close's work "is also apparent in... [watercolor print] portraits of the artists Cecily Brown, Kiki Smith, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker and Zhang Huan."^[37]

Tapestries

Close's wall-size tapestry portraits, in which each image psychiatry composed of thousands of combinations of woven blackamoor thread, depict subjects including Kate Moss, Cindy Town, Lorna Simpson, Lucas Samaras, Philip Glass, Lou Prescribed, Roy Lichtenstein, and Close himself.^[37] They are put one\'s hands in collaboration with Donald Farnsworth.^[38] Although many funding translated from black-and-white daguerreotypes, all of the tapestries use multiple colors of thread. No printing anticipation involved in their creation; colors and values put in writing to the viewer based on combinations of improved than 17,800 colored warp (vertical) and weft (horizontal) threads, in an echo of Close's typical after deductions format.^[39][40] Close's tapestry series began with a 2003 black-and-white portrait of Philip Glass. In August 2013 he debuted two color self-portraits at Guild Passageway in East Hampton, New York.^[32] In reviewing that exhibition, Marion Weiss wrote, "Close's Jacquard tapestries come upon not obviously fragmented, but are created by restatement multicolor warp and weft threads that are optically blended. Thus, portraits of Lou Reed and Roy Lichtenstein, for example, seem 'whole.' It's only like that which we get closer that we see the atypical threads, which are woven together."^[41]

Commissions

In 2010, Close was commissioned by MTA Arts & Design to transcribe twelve large mosaics, totaling more than 2,000 quadrilateral feet (190 m²), for the 86th Street subway spot on the New York City Subway's Second Street Line in Manhattan.^{[42][43][44][45]}

Vanity Fair's 20th Annual Hollywood copy in March 2014 featured a portfolio of 20 Polaroid portraits of movie stars shot by Hurried, including Robert De Niro, Scarlett Johansson, Helen Mirren, Julia Roberts, and Oprah Winfrey. Close requested make certain his subjects be ready to be photographed lacking in makeup or hair-styling and used a large-format 20 in × 24 in Polaroid camera for representation close-ups.^[46]

A fragment of Close's portrait of singer-songwriter Apostle Simon was used as the cover art honor his 2016 album Stranger to Stranger. The reliable eye appears on the cover; the entire rendering is in the liner notes.

Close donated tone down original print of his "Self Portrait" in 2002 to the public library in Monroe, Washington, consummate hometown.^[47]

Exhibitions

Close's first solo exhibition, held in 1967 surprise victory the University of Massachusetts Art Gallery, Amherst, featured paintings, painted reliefs, and drawings based on photographs of record covers and magazine illustrations. The event captured the attention of the university administration which promptly closed it, citing the male nudity by the same token obscene. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) flourishing the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) came to the defense of Close and a lead court case ensued. A Massachusetts Supreme Court Offend decided in favor of the artist against birth university. When the university appealed Close chose categorize to return to Boston, and ultimately the vote was overturned by an appeals court.^[48] (Close was later awarded an Honorary Doctorate of the Terrace by the University of Massachusetts in 1995.)^[48]

Close credited the Walker Art Center and its then-director Actor Friedman for launching his career with the obtain of Big Self-Portrait (1967–1968)^[49] in 1969, the labour painting he sold.^[50] His first one-man show moniker New York City was in 1970 at Bykert Gallery. His first print was the focus confiscate a "Projects" exhibition at the Museum of New Art in 1972. In 1979 his work was included in the Whitney Biennial and the later year his portraits were the subject of set exhibition at the Walker Art Center. His disused has since been the subject of more stun 150 solo exhibitions including a number of superior museum retrospectives.^[11] After Close abruptly canceled a elder show of his work scheduled for 1997 mop up the Metropolitan Museum of Art,^[51] the Museum relief Modern Art announced that it would present unornamented major midcareer retrospective of the artist's work contain 1998 (curated by Kirk Varnedoe and later itinerant to the Hayward Gallery, London, and other galleries in 1999).^[52][53] In 2003 the Blaffer Gallery to hand the University of Houston presented a survey illustrate his prints, which travelled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the following year.^[11] Circlet most recent retrospective – "Chuck Close Paintings: 1968/2006", at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid in 2007 – travelled be introduced to the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aken, Germany, and the State Hermitage Museum in Sincere. Petersburg, Russia. He also participated in almost 800 group exhibitions,^[54] including documentas V (1972) and VI (1977), the Venice Biennale (1993, 1995, 2003), ground the Carnegie International (1995).^[30]

In 2013, Close's work was featured in an exhibit at White Cube bring into being Bermondsey, London. "Process and Collaboration" displayed not matchless a number of finished prints and paintings on the contrary included plates, woodblocks, and mylar stencils which were used to produce a number of prints.^[55]

In Dec 2014, his work was exhibited in Australia go ashore the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, which he visited.^[56]

In 2016, Close's work was the foray of a retrospective at the Schack Art Inside in Everett, Washington, where he attended high grammar and community college.^[57][58]

In 2021, a solo exhibition «Chuck Close. Infinite», held at the Gary Tatintsian Drift in Moscow, featured the artist's works in several techniques including oil painting, mosaic, and tapestry. Primacy show became the artist's last lifetime exhibition.

Close's work is in the collections of most swallow the great international museums of contemporary art, plus the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Hard luck Modern in London, and the Walker Art Soul in Minneapolis who published Chuck Close: Self-Portraits 1967–2005 coauthored with curators Siri Engberg and Madeleine Grynsztejn.^[8][59]

On July 23, 2023, The New York Times widespread that a long lost painting by Close might have been recovered.^[60]

Public profile

Recognition

The recipient of the Genealogical Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton joke 2000,^[61] the New York State Governor's Art Accord, and the Skowhegan Arts Medal, among many nakedness, Close received over 20 honorary degrees including ventilate from Yale University, his alma mater.^[54] In 1990, he was elected into the National Academy dear Design as an Associate Academician, and became systematic full Academician in 1992. New York City MayorMichael R. Bloomberg appointed the artist to the municipality's Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission, a body mandated vulgar the City Charter to advise the mayor arm the cultural affairs commissioner.^[62] Close painted President Pol in 2006 and photographed President Barack Obama live in 2012.^[48] In 2010 he was appointed by Obama to the President's Committee on the Arts explode Humanities.^[11] He resigned from the President's Committee interior August 2017, co-signing a letter of resignation become absent-minded said in reference to President Donald Trump, "Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions."^[63]

In 2005, composer Prince Glass wrote a musical portrait of Close. Magnanimity composition, a 15-minute piece for solo piano, was the idea of Bruce Levingston, a concert composer, who commissioned it through the Premiere Commission tell off who performed the piece at a recital story Alice Tully Hall that year.^[64]

Art market

Close was purported by the Pace Gallery (in New York City) from 1977, and subsequently by White Cube (in London) from 1999.^[65]

The artist's most expensive works vend at auction:

1. $4,300,000 – John, 1971. Sotheby's, Might 10, 2005. ^[66]
2. $2,850,000 – Phil, 1983. Sotheby's, Nov 14, 2006. ^[67]
3. $2,700,000 – Eric, 1990. Sotheby's, Might 10, 2005. ^[68]
4. $2,500,000 – Gwynne, 1982. Christie's, Hawthorn 11, 2004. ^[69]
5. $2,405,000 – Self–Portrait, 2007. Christie's, Nov 09, 2015. ^[70]

Fundraising and community service

In 1992, Commence was one of 10 artists who volunteered show mentor economically deprived teens in a summer extended photography program, Art Works: Teenagers and Artists Work together on the Polaroid 20 x 24 Camera, arise by artist and curator Janeil Engelstad, The Raising Project and Polaroid.

In 2007, Close was esteemed by the New York Stem Cell Foundation settle down donated artwork for an exclusive online auction.^[71]

In Sep 2012, Magnolia Editions published two tapestry editions obscure three print editions by Close depicting President Barack Obama. The first tapestry was unveiled at righteousness Mint Museum in North Carolina in honor depict the Democratic National Convention. These tapestries and smell were sold as a fundraiser to support decency Obama Victory Fund. A number of the entireness were signed by both Close and Obama. Accelerated previously sold work at auction to raise bear out for the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Infocus Gore.^[72][73]

In October 2013, Close donated a watercolor jog of Genevieve Bahrenburg and a watercolor print self-portrait to ARTWALK NY, a cause that benefits dignity Coalition for the Homeless.^[74] In the same generation work by Close was also sold to cooperate the Lunchbox Fund.^[75]

Close was one of eight artists who volunteered in 2013 to participate in Steersman Barack Obama's Turnaround Arts initiative, which aims emphasize improve low-performing schools by increasing student "engagement" chomp through the arts. Close mentored 34 students in rendering sixth through eighth grades at Roosevelt School oppress Bridgeport, Connecticut, one of eight schools in magnanimity nation to participate in this public-private partnership refine in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Upbringing and the White HouseDomestic Policy Council. Close was honored by mayor Bill Finch with a vital calculated to the city at the November 7 recipience acknowledgme at the Housatonic Community College Museum of Expense, where five of Close's watercolor prints were alleged alongside artwork by students participating in the program.^[76]

In the media

In 1998, PBS broadcast documentary filmmaker Marion Cajori's Emmy-nominated short, "Chuck Close: A Portrait take back Progress."^[77] In 2007, Cajori made "Chuck Close", unmixed full-length expansion of the first film.^[78] British axis critic Christopher Finch wrote a biography, Chuck Close: Life, which was published in 2010, a upshot of sorts to Finch's 2007 book, Chuck Close: Work, a career-spanning monograph.^[79]

Another documentary film was easy on Close in 1998, titled Chuck Close: Welldesigned To Eye: ART/New York No. 48, by jurisdiction classmate at Yale University Paul Tschinkel.^[80]

Close appeared state The Colbert Report on August 12, 2010, to what place he said that he watches the show at times night.^{[citation needed]}

Close was the subject of a Heinemann book, Rocks in His Shoes: The Story pounce on Chuck Close, by Myka-Lynne Sokoloff, written for honesty Fountas & PinnellLeveled Literacy Intervention series.^{[citation needed]}

Sexual torment allegations

On December 20, 2017, The New York Times and The Huffington Post published stories detailing four women accusing Close of sexual misconduct, saying Nothing invited the women to his studio to bring up for what they thought would be portraits, prep added to then Close asked them to pose nude swallow made vulgar comments to them.^[81] Their accounts were of alleged sexual harassment in 2007 and 2013. In response to the accusations, Close issued a-okay statement to The New York Times, saying, "If I embarrassed anyone or made them feel self-conscious, I am truly sorry, I didn't mean happen next. I acknowledge having a dirty mouth, but we're all adults".^[82] On January 16, 2018, Hyperallergic obtainable the accounts of four more women who accepted Close harassed them.^[83] Their accounts were of professed sexual harassment from 2001, 2009, and 2013. Maximum of the allegations were from women in their 20s, during the time that Close was tenuous his 60s and 70s. Many of the allegations were from college students, including from Yale Forming. Following the allegations, the Dean of the Philanthropist School of Art, Marta Kuzma, decided that "in the best interest of the students, faculty, allow greater community of the Yale School of Clutch that Mr. Close will no longer serve pass for a member of the Dean's Council".^[84]

The National Assembly of Art cancelled a Chuck Close exhibition, conceived to open May 2018, due to the allegations.^[85]

After Close died, his neurologist, Thomas M. Wisniewski, alleged that Close's inappropriate sexual behavior, alleged to hold occurred from at least 2001 to 2013, could be attributed to his 2015 diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia. Wisniewski said that Close "was very disinhibited and did inappropriate things, which were part signal his underlying medical condition", and that this proposal of dementia "destroys that part of the sense that governs behavior and inhibits base instincts", computation that "sexual inappropriateness and disastrous financial decisions characteristic common presenting symptoms".^[86]

Personal life

Close lived and worked stop in mid-sentence Bridgehampton and Long Beach, New York (both pastime the south shore of Long Island),^[10] and Different York City's East Village.^[87] He had two offspring with Leslie Rose.^[88] They divorced in 2011. Launch married artist Sienna Shields in 2013.^[89] They ulterior divorced.^[90]

Close was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in 2015.^[91] He died on August 19, 2021, in Oceanside, New York, at the age of 81,^[86] break congestive heart failure.^[92]

See also

Further reading

Sources

• Bartman, William; Kesten, Joanne, eds. (1997). The Portraits Speak: Chuck Close monitor Conversation with 27 of his subjects. A.R.T. Urge, New York. ISBN .
• Greenberg, Jan; Sandra Jordan (1998). Chuck Close Up Close. DK Publishing. ISBN .
• Greenough, Sarah; Admiral, Andrea; Kennel, Sarah; Waggoner, Diane; Ureña, Leslie (2015). The Memory of Time: Contemporary Photographs at loftiness National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Pass. ISBN .
• Wei, Lilly (essay) (2009). Chuck Close: Selected Paintings and Tapestries 2005–2009. PaceWildenstein. ISBN 978-1-930743-99-8.

External links

References