Chuck Close's Early Work

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:51:37 -0400

Title
Author	Bobby

Self-Portrait/Woodcut

Chuck Close — Sat, 01 Jun 2002 00:00:00 -0400

Title	Self-Portrait/Woodcut
Artist	Chuck Close
Date	2002
Institution	Walker Art Center
Location	Not on view.

A self-portrait of the artist's face. A handprinted 43 color woodcut.

Kiki

Chuck Close — Tue, 01 Jun 1993 00:00:00 -0400

Title	Kiki
Artist	Chuck Close
Date	1993
Institution	Walker Art Center
Location	Not on view.

Reverse: keyed stretcher system. Left and right stretcher bars-two D rings each side. Upper and Lower stretcher bars-2 Oz clips each bar. Five plates on horizontal bars to support joins. Stickers: reverse ML: "The Pace Gallery Recent Works Chuck Close October 22-November 27, 1993"

Phil / Fingerprint

Mon, 01 Jun 1981 00:00:00 -0400

Title	Phil / Fingerprint
Artist	Chuck Close ; Pace Editions, New York ; Printed by Vermillion Editions Limited, Minneapolis
Date	1981
Institution	Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Location	Not on view.

Big Self-Portrait

Chuck Close — Thu, 01 Jun 1967 00:00:00 -0400

Title	Big Self-Portrait
Artist	Chuck Close
Date	1967–1968
Institution	Walker Art Center
Location	Not on view.

self-portrait of the artist

Frank

Chuck Close — Sun, 01 Jun 1969 00:00:00 -0400

Title	Frank
Artist	Chuck Close
Date	1969
Institution	Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Location	On view at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, G373

Portrait Of Frank James

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:51:37 -0400

Title
Author	Bobby

Chuck Close at MoMA

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:51:38 -0400

Title	Chuck Close at MoMA
Author	Bobby

Phil / Fingerprint

Mon, 01 Jun 1981 00:00:00 -0400

Title	Phil / Fingerprint
Artist	Chuck Close ; Pace Editions, New York ; Printed by Vermillion Editions Limited, Minneapolis
Date	1981
Institution	Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Location	Not on view.

artist's quote

Mon, 01 Jun 1970 00:00:00 -0400

Title	artist's quote
Author	Chuck Close
Date	1970
Institution	Walker Art Center

I am not trying to make facsimiles of photographs. Neither am I interested in the icon of the head as a total image. I don't want the viewer to see the whole head at once and assume that that's the most important aspect of my painting. I am not making Pop personality posters like the ones they sell in the Village. That's why I choose to do portraits of my friends -- individuals that most people will not recognize. I don't want the viewer to recognize the head of Castro and think he has understood my work. Chuck Close, 1970

Frank: Gallery Label - Current

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Title	Frank: Gallery Label - Current
Author	Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Date	2009-07-17
Institution	Minneapolis Institute of Arts

The model for this painting was not Frank himself but rather an 8 x 10-inch photograph of him. In the 1960s, Chuck Close photographed his subjects and then meticulously copied the photographic images, in paint, onto large canvases. With this painstaking technique, he preserved the objectivity of photography. Close also simulated the way the camera, like the human eye, focuses on one area at a time, leaving other areas blurred. By these means, he directed our attention to some intriguing aspects of visual perception.A work of such grand scale--typical of American painting after 1950--is unsettling, particularly when it features a colossal human head. "The large scale," Close explained, "forces the viewer to read the surface of the painting differently...[to] look at it piece by piece." The details, then, can be perceived either as facial pores and hairs or as an abstract pattern of black, gray, and white.

: Two Contemporary Acquisitions for Minneapolis

Sun, 01 Jun 1969 00:00:00 -0400

Title	: Two Contemporary Acquisitions for Minneapolis
Author	Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Date	1969
Institution	Minneapolis Institute of Arts

For more than a century the camera has had an apparent stranglehold on Realism. As early as 1840, photography had become a public craze and almost simultaneously academic conceptions of painting were vigorously challenged. The camera jolted centuries of tradition and thoroughly undermined the very essence of painting even though Delacroix, Corot, Manet, and Cezanne often made use of photographs in their works. Serious representational painters in each succeeding generation managed to ride out a continuous barrage of abstractions, but nonetheless, the omnipresent camera was a nagging reminder that it could record likenesses faster and with much greater fidelity.

It is now clear that the camera, so often associated with the virtual demise of Realism, is, a century later, offering this diffuse, but continuing movement a whole new impetus.¹ Moreover, a rash of recent exhibitions² indicate that photography will ultimately share a strong position in the arts, a position long denied in the past. They also clarify with new intensity photography's importance in all the visual arts. A multitude of processes such as photo-intaglios, photo-engravings, and photo-lithographs, commercial silkscreens, verifax copies, films, slides, three-dimensional photography, videotapes, holographs, and photographs which constitute themselves as works of art are now commonplace. In addition, the continual development of art works modified by time—Happenings, Events, Kinetic and Light Art, Environments, Earthworks, Conceptual Art and Process Pieces—have all required documentation in one form or another.³

Chuck Close is one of several young American photo-realists working from slides or photographs, but unlike many, Close does not rely on the convenience of commercial processing. His portraits are painstakingly executed with the aid of air brushes,⁴ each work requiring little more than two tablespoons of black acrylic. The paint is sprayed on the canvas in gradual layers of light to dark, neither white nor color is added, brush strokes and surface textures are avoided and details are scratched through with razor blades.

Close's paintings are purposely ambiguous. Various areas in his portraits are intentionally blurred as they might appear in our peripheral vision when viewing the face from a distance. Yet, these same areas remain indistinct when they are inspected at close range. Contrary to traditional portraiture or still life painting, Close seldom sharpens up areas as his eye concentrates on them separately.

Admittedly, Frank⁵ is not a pretty picture. Little effort has been made to please the view or the sitter, and Close firmly denies any concern for literal or aesthetic content. He usually works from snapshots of friends and is faithful to every surface detail. Hair, pores, eye glasses, and acne are amplified with such fidelity that they take on personalities of their own. The direct frontal view of the face, hypnotic glare, blemishes, and the deliberate, no-nonsense attitude of Frank recall the similar brutal reality found in the photomatic snapshot and the compelling mug shot.

Unlike Close, Robert Rauschenberg actually uses photographic processes in his work. Since 1964, lithography has occupied most of his energies, and in fact, graphics provide the central record of his artistic growth from 1964 to the present. Rauschenberg's immense output and innovation in all media, perhaps more than the work of any artist in the past decade, has required a continual readjustment of prevailing notions about art.

In 1965 Rauschenberg began working on Shades, a series of five transparent glass plates which were lithographed directly from the stone and which are meant to be arranged by the spectator at will. Just as the silkscreen prints led to the lithographed paintings, so the images on the transparent pages in Shades clearly anticipate Rauschenberg's recent sculptural objects, the Revolvers, Soundings, his large Soltice, designed for the 1968 Documenta in Kassel, Germany, and the Carnal Clock Series.

Acre⁶ consists of a square, shallow box in which plexiglass panels hide a clock that contains lights. These lights are activated by time: one light indicates the minute hand and changes every two and a half minutes; the other light represents the hour hand and changes every half hour. The plexiglass panels are printed with silkscreened images that can only be seen when the light in back of a particular image lights up. By reading the positioning of the two lights, one can not only tell the time, but read whichever of the two images happens to be lit up at the moment. At both noon and midnight the entire surface lights up for two-and-a-half minutes.

The images on the surfaces are screened in Rauschenberg's usual manner and include such figurative items as breasts, buttocks, and sexual organs offered in a variety of postures. Most of the images are disembodied and although undeniably provocative, they are too detached to be pornographic.

Endnotes

It is curious that another art form, cinema, suffered an identical paralysis in the fifties from television. But again, threatening as it may have seemed then, television has given cinema a renewed vitality.
Plans and Projects as Art (Kunsthalle, Bern, 1969); Documents As Art (The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1969); Paintings From The Photo (Riverside Museum, New York, 1969); Artists Photographs (Multiples, Inc., New York, 1970); Photography Into Sculpture (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970); Evidence on the Flight of Six Fugitives (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1970); Information (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970).
Regrettably, few museums have met these needs by preserving similar works either in sequential photographs or on film, and the development of the videotape is as important for the historian as it is for the artist.
Man Ray, a painter who supported himself by photography (Rayograph), is generally recognized as the first to use an air brush in painting.
69.137. The John R. Van Derlip Fund. Acrylic on canvas, 9' x 7' x 3”.
69.134. Gift of Mr. Robert Rauschenberg. Silkscreen ink on mirrored plexiglass with electronic equipment, 60” x 60” x 10”.

Referenced Works of Art

Charles Close. American (1940 - ). Frank, 1969. Acrylic on canvas, 9' x 7' x 3”. The John R. Van Derlip Fund, 69.137.
Robert Rauschenberg. American (1925 - ). Acre (from the Carnal Clock Series), 1969. Silkscreen ink on mirrored plexiglass with electronic equipment, 60” x 60” x 10”. Gift of Mr. Robert Rauschenberg, 69.134.

Chuck Close, Kiki (track 1)

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Title	Chuck Close, Kiki (track 1)
Creator	Art on Call
Date	November 19, 2009
Institution	Walker Art Center

Walker Curator Siri Engberg locates "Kiki" in the development of Close's work.

This audio file is part of Art on Call, the Walker Art Center audio program that includes artists, curators, and tour guides discussing works of art from the Walker's collection. Art on Call's interpretative content, a complete up-to-date listing of events at the Walker, and much more is available on your phone at 612.374.8200. Additional play options and more information about the program are available online at http://newmedia.walkerart.org/aoc/

Chuck Close's Early Work

Self-Portrait/Woodcut

Self-Portrait/Woodcut

2002

Kiki

Kiki

1993

Phil / Fingerprint

Phil / Fingerprint

1981

Big Self-Portrait

Big Self-Portrait

1967–1968

Frank

Frank

1969

Chuck Close at MoMA

Chuck Close at MoMA

Phil / Fingerprint

Phil / Fingerprint

1981

artist's quote

artist's quote

Chuck Close

1970

Frank: Gallery Label - Current

Frank: Gallery Label - Current

Minneapolis Institute of Arts

2009-07-17

: Two Contemporary Acquisitions for Minneapolis

: Two Contemporary Acquisitions for Minneapolis

Minneapolis Institute of Arts

1969

Chuck Close, Kiki (track 1)

Chuck Close, Kiki (track 1)

Art on Call

November 19, 2009