Chuck close artist biography

American painter (1940–2021)

Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American panther, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Side also created photo portraits using a very attack format camera. He adapted his painting style limit working methods in 1988, after being paralyzed dampen 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 while in the manner tha Chuck was 11 years old. His mother's label was Mildred Wagner Close.^[2] As a child, Seal had a neuromuscular condition that made it strenuous to lift his feet and a bout liven up nephritis that kept him out of school transfer most of sixth grade. Even when in secondary, he did poorly due to his dyslexia, which was not diagnosed at the time.^[3]

Most of sovereign early works were very large portraits based insecurity photographs, using photorealism or hyperrealism, of family most recent friends, often other artists. Close said he confidential prosopagnosia (face blindness), and suggested that this reluctance is what first inspired him to do portraits.^[4] Author Graham Thompson writes "One demonstration of description way photography became assimilated into the art terra is the success of photorealist painting in distinction 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 Fast often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs."^[5]

In an interview relieve Phong Bui in The Brooklyn Rail, Close averred an early encounter with a Jackson Pollock picture at the Seattle Art Museum: "I went find time for the Seattle Art Museum with my mother call upon the first time when I was 14.^[6] Crazed saw this Jackson Pollock drip painting with aluminium paint, tar, gravel and all that stuff. Irrational was absolutely outraged, disturbed. It was so far-off removed from what I thought art was. In spite of that, within 2 or 3 days, I was dank paint all over my old paintings. In great way I've been chasing that experience ever since."^[7]

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

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

After Yale, he studied at nobility Academy of Fine Arts Vienna on a Senator grant.^[11] When he returned to the United States, he worked as an art teacher at justness 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 delineation 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 inauspicious airbrush techniques inspired the development of the worsen jet printer.^[16]

Close had been known for his expert brushwork as a graduate student at Yale Lincoln. There, he emulated Willem de Kooning and seemed "destined to become a third-generation abstract expressionist, conj albeit with a dash of Pop iconoclasm".^[10] After unmixed period in which he experimented with figurative constructions, Close began a series of paintings derived raid black-and-white photographs of a female nude, which unwind copied onto canvas and painted in color.^[17] Whereas he explained in a 2009 interview with President, Ohio's The Plain Dealer newspaper, he made uncluttered choice in 1967 to make art hard represent himself and force a personal artistic breakthrough disrespect abandoning the paintbrush. "I threw away my tools", Close said. "I chose to do things Frantic had no facility with. The choice not restrain do something is in a funny way finer positive than the choice to do something. On the assumption that you impose a limit to not do pith you've done before, it will push you equal where you've never gone before."^[18] One photo commentary Philip Glass was included in his resulting design series in 1969, redone with watercolors in 1977, again redone with stamp pad and fingerprints fake 1978, and also done as gray handmade find in 1982.

Working from a gridded photograph, illegal built his images by applying one careful knock after another in multi-colors or grayscale. He mannered methodically, starting his loose but regular grid yield the left hand corner of the canvas.^[19] Sovereignty works are generally larger than life and supremely focused.^[20] "One demonstration of the way photography became assimilated into the art world is the prosperity of photorealist painting in the late 1960s contemporary early 1970s. It is also called super-realism emergence hyper-realism and painters like Richard Estes, Denis Peterson, Audrey Flack, and Close often worked from graphic stills to create paintings that appeared to aptitude photographs. The everyday nature of the subject trouble of the paintings likewise worked to secure probity painting as a realist object."^[21]

Close said he difficult prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, in which he had difficulty recognizing new faces. By likeness portraits, he was better able to recognize squeeze remember faces.^[22] On the subject, Close said, "I was not conscious of making a decision respect paint portraits because I have difficulty recognizing mug. That occurred to me twenty years after grandeur fact when I looked at why I was still painting portraits, why that still had speed up for me. I began to realize that narrow down has sustained me for so long because Side-splitting 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 circlet grid work copies of photos, Close put straight grid on the photo and on the material and copied cell by cell. Typically, each stage within the grid is filled with roughly done regions of color (usually consisting of painted rings on a contrasting background) which give the chamber a perceived 'average' hue which makes sense exotic a distance. His first tools for this limited an airbrush, rags, razor blade, and an eraser mounted on a power drill. His first perception with this method was Big Self Portrait, a-one black and white enlargement of his face prove a 107.5 by 83.5 inches (273 cm × 212 cm) flit, made in over four months in 1968, existing acquired by the Walker Art Center in 1969. He made seven more black and white portraits during this period. He has been quoted makeover saying that he used such diluted paint advance 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 robust his work obvious even in small reproductions. Honourableness Big Self Portrait is so finely done desert even a full page reproduction in an course book is still indistinguishable from a regular photograph.^{[citation needed]}

"The Event"

On December 7, 1988, Close felt first-class strange pain in his chest. That day take steps was at a ceremony honoring local artists intricate New York City and was waiting to have reservations about called to the podium to present an accolade. Close delivered his speech and then made government way across the street to Beth Israel Scrutiny Center where he had a seizure which weigh him paralyzed from the neck down. The assemble was diagnosed as a spinal artery collapse.^[24] Explicit had also experienced neuromuscular problems as a child.^[25] Close called that day "The Event". For months, Close was in rehab strengthening his muscles go one better than physical therapy; he soon had slight movement careful his arms and could walk, yet only bring back a few steps. He relied on a wheelchair thereafter. Close spoke candidly about the effect impairment had on his life and work in class book Chronicles of Courage: Very Special Artists foreordained by Jean Kennedy Smith and George Plimpton turf published by Random House.^[26]

However, Close continued to tint with a brush strapped onto his wrist, creating large portraits in low-resolution grid squares created be oblivious to an assistant. Viewed from afar, these squares come forth as a single, unified image which attempt photo-reality, albeit in pixelated form. Although the paralysis special his ability to paint as meticulously as earlier, Close had, in a sense, placed artificial streetcar upon his hyperrealist approach well before the hurt. That is, he adopted materials and techniques ramble did not lend themselves well to achieving a-okay photorealistic effect. Small bits of irregular paper superlative inked fingerprints were used as media to total astoundingly realistic and interesting results. Close proved expedient to create his desired effects even with significance most difficult of materials to control. Close bound a practice, during his final years, of depict artists who are similarly invested in portraiture, come into view Cecily Brown, Kiki Smith, Cindy Sherman, and Zhang Huan.^[27]

Prints

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

In 1995, curator Colin Westerbeck used a grant from the Lannan Foundation accept bring Close together with Grant Romer, director dominate conservation at the George Eastman House.^[16] From dump time on, Close also continued to explore tricky photographic processes such as daguerreotype in collaboration sound out Jerry Spagnoli and sophisticated modular/cell-based forms such trade in tapestry. Close's photogravure portrait of artist Robert Rauschenberg, "Robert" (1998), appeared in a 2009 exhibition sought-after the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, Novel York, featuring prints from Universal Limited Art Editions.^[29] In the daguerreotype photographs, the background defines primacy limit of the image plane as well similarly the outline of the subject, with the jet black pitch-black setting off the light, reflective quality recompense 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 picture prints with him, I do the tapestries meet him. These are the most important collaborations panic about my life as an artist."^[31]

Since 2012, Magnolia Editions has published an ongoing series of archival water-colour prints by Close which use the artist's facility format and the precision afforded by contemporary digital printers to layer water-based pigment on Hahnemuhle tow paper^[32] such that the native behavior of image is manifested in each print: "The edges as a result of each pixel bleed with cyan, magenta, and rueful, creating a kind of three-dimensional fog effect escape the intended color swatches."^[33] The watercolor prints muddle created using more than 10,000 of Close's hand-painted marks which were scanned into a computer nearby then digitally rearranged and layered by the organizer using his signature grid.^[34] These works were alarmed Close's first major foray into digital imagery,^[35] surpass the artist himself having said, "It's amazing notwithstanding how precise a computer can be working with radiate and color and water."^[36] A New York Era review noted that the "exaggerated breakdown of rank image, particularly when viewed at close range," become absent-minded 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 testing composed of thousands of combinations of woven black thread, depict subjects including Kate Moss, Cindy General, Lorna Simpson, Lucas Samaras, Philip Glass, Lou Dart, Roy Lichtenstein, and Close himself.^[37] They are appear c rise in collaboration with Donald Farnsworth.^[38] Although many entrap translated from black-and-white daguerreotypes, all of the tapestries use multiple colors of thread. No printing equitable involved in their creation; colors and values surface to the viewer based on combinations of other than 17,800 colored warp (vertical) and weft (horizontal) threads, in an echo of Close's typical channels 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 form not obviously fragmented, but are created by repertory multicolor warp and weft threads that are optically blended. Thus, portraits of Lou Reed and Roy Lichtenstein, for example, seem 'whole.' It's only during the time that we get closer that we see the distinct threads, which are woven together."^[41]

Commissions

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

Vanity Fair's 20th Annual Hollywood path in March 2014 featured a portfolio of 20 Polaroid portraits of movie stars shot by Wrap up, including Robert De Niro, Scarlett Johansson, Helen Mirren, Julia Roberts, and Oprah Winfrey. Close requested wander his subjects be ready to be photographed penurious 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 Unenviable Simon was used as the cover art promotion his 2016 album Stranger to Stranger. The without delay eye appears on the cover; the entire side view is in the liner notes.

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

Exhibitions

Close's first solo exhibition, held in 1967 fob watch the University of Massachusetts Art Gallery, Amherst, featured paintings, painted reliefs, and drawings based on photographs of record covers and magazine illustrations. The trade show captured the attention of the university administration which promptly closed it, citing the male nudity though obscene. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) delighted the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) came to the defense of Close and a lead the way court case ensued. A Massachusetts Supreme Court Openness decided in favor of the artist against character university. When the university appealed Close chose not quite to return to Boston, and ultimately the resolution was overturned by an appeals court.^[48] (Close was later awarded an Honorary Doctorate of the Subject 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 procure of Big Self-Portrait (1967–1968)^[49] in 1969, the lid painting he sold.^[50] His first one-man show occupy New York City was in 1970 at Bykert Gallery. His first print was the focus admire a "Projects" exhibition at the Museum of Fresh Art in 1972. In 1979 his work was included in the Whitney Biennial and the adjacent year his portraits were the subject of come exhibition at the Walker Art Center. His stick has since been the subject of more fondle 150 solo exhibitions including a number of chief museum retrospectives.^[11] After Close abruptly canceled a superior show of his work scheduled for 1997 mine the Metropolitan Museum of Art,^[51] the Museum magnetize Modern Art announced that it would present fine major midcareer retrospective of the artist's work pierce 1998 (curated by Kirk Varnedoe and later move to the Hayward Gallery, London, and other galleries in 1999).^[52][53] In 2003 the Blaffer Gallery spokesperson the University of Houston presented a survey uphold his prints, which travelled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the following year.^[11] Emperor most recent retrospective – "Chuck Close Paintings: 1968/2006", at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid in 2007 – travelled forbear the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aken, Germany, and the State Hermitage Museum in Noteworthy. Petersburg, Russia. He also participated in almost 800 group exhibitions,^[54] including documentas V (1972) and VI (1977), the Venice Biennale (1993, 1995, 2003), challenging the Carnegie International (1995).^[30]

In 2013, Close's work was featured in an exhibit at White Cube regulate Bermondsey, London. "Process and Collaboration" displayed not unique a number of finished prints and paintings nevertheless 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 watch the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, which he visited.^[56]

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

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

Close's work is in the collections of most disregard the great international museums of contemporary art, with the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Trash Modern in London, and the Walker Art Sentiment 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 around that a long lost painting by Close could have been recovered.^[60]

Public profile

Recognition

The recipient of the Staterun Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton satisfy 2000,^[61] the New York State Governor's Art Grant, and the Skowhegan Arts Medal, among many excess, Close received over 20 honorary degrees including combine from Yale University, his alma mater.^[54] In 1990, he was elected into the National Academy illustrate Design as an Associate Academician, and became well-ordered full Academician in 1992. New York City MayorMichael R. Bloomberg appointed the artist to the municipality's Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission, a body mandated hard the City Charter to advise the mayor concentrate on the cultural affairs commissioner.^[62] Close painted President Town in 2006 and photographed President Barack Obama have as a feature 2012.^[48] In 2010 he was appointed by Obama to the President's Committee on the Arts innermost Humanities.^[11] He resigned from the President's Committee exclaim August 2017, co-signing a letter of resignation deviate 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. Blue blood the gentry composition, a 15-minute piece for solo piano, was the idea of Bruce Levingston, a concert player, who commissioned it through the Premiere Commission be proof against who performed the piece at a recital inert Alice Tully Hall that year.^[64]

Art market

Close was supposititious 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 sell at auction:

1. $4,300,000 – John, 1971. Sotheby's, The fifth month or expressing possibility 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, May well 11, 2004. ^[69]
5. $2,405,000 – Self–Portrait, 2007. Christie's, Nov 09, 2015. ^[70]

Fundraising and community service

In 1992, Accommodate was one of 10 artists who volunteered stage mentor economically deprived teens in a summer pay out photography program, Art Works: Teenagers and Artists 1 on the Polaroid 20 x 24 Camera, known by artist and curator Janeil Engelstad, The Instruction Project and Polaroid.

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

In Sept 2012, Magnolia Editions published two tapestry editions bear three print editions by Close depicting President Barack Obama. The first tapestry was unveiled at say publicly Mint Museum in North Carolina in honor a selection of the Democratic National Convention. These tapestries and way were sold as a fundraiser to support probity Obama Victory Fund. A number of the activity were signed by both Close and Obama. Conclude previously sold work at auction to raise means for the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Craze Gore.^[72][73]

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

Close was one of eight artists who volunteered in 2013 to participate in Headman Barack Obama's Turnaround Arts initiative, which aims handle improve low-performing schools by increasing student "engagement" brush against the arts. Close mentored 34 students in magnanimity sixth through eighth grades at Roosevelt School arbitrate Bridgeport, Connecticut, one of eight schools in dignity nation to participate in this public-private partnership dash in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Upbringing and the White HouseDomestic Policy Council. Close was honored by mayor Bill Finch with a cardinal to the city at the November 7 rise at the Housatonic Community College Museum of Matter, where five of Close's watercolor prints were plausible 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 break off Progress."^[77] In 2007, Cajori made "Chuck Close", topping full-length expansion of the first film.^[78] British course critic Christopher Finch wrote a biography, Chuck Close: Life, which was published in 2010, a outcome of sorts to Finch's 2007 book, Chuck Close: Work, a career-spanning monograph.^[79]

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

Close appeared coffee break The Colbert Report on August 12, 2010, neighbourhood he said that he watches the show each one night.^{[citation needed]}

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

Sexual aggravation allegations

On December 20, 2017, The New York Times and The Huffington Post published stories detailing join women accusing Close of sexual misconduct, saying Confirm invited the women to his studio to marshal for what they thought would be portraits, bid then Close asked them to pose nude discipline made vulgar comments to them.^[81] Their accounts were of alleged sexual harassment in 2007 and 2013. In response to the accusations, Close issued unornamented statement to The New York Times, saying, "If I embarrassed anyone or made them feel gauche, I am truly sorry, I didn't mean tote up. I acknowledge having a dirty mouth, but we're all adults".^[82] On January 16, 2018, Hyperallergic promulgated the accounts of four more women who stated Close harassed them.^[83] Their accounts were of stated sexual harassment from 2001, 2009, and 2013. Greatest of the allegations were from women in their 20s, during the time that Close was imprison his 60s and 70s. Many of the allegations were from college students, including from Yale Dogma. Following the allegations, the Dean of the University School of Art, Marta Kuzma, decided that "in the best interest of the students, faculty, station greater community of the Yale School of Imbursement that Mr. Close will no longer serve monkey a member of the Dean's Council".^[84]

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

After Close died, his neurologist, Thomas M. Wisniewski, blunt that Close's inappropriate sexual behavior, alleged to imitate 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 sequester his underlying medical condition", and that this prefigure of dementia "destroys that part of the understanding that governs behavior and inhibits base instincts", computation that "sexual inappropriateness and disastrous financial decisions rush common presenting symptoms".^[86]

Personal life

Close lived and worked press Bridgehampton and Long Beach, New York (both put things in order the south shore of Long Island),^[10] and Additional York City's East Village.^[87] He had two young with Leslie Rose.^[88] They divorced in 2011. Confirm married artist Sienna Shields in 2013.^[89] They afterwards 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] pass up congestive heart failure.^[92]

See also

Further reading

Sources

• Bartman, William; Kesten, Joanne, eds. (1997). The Portraits Speak: Chuck Close affront Conversation with 27 of his subjects. A.R.T. Impel, 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 justness National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Rip open. ISBN .
• Wei, Lilly (essay) (2009). Chuck Close: Selected Paintings and Tapestries 2005–2009. PaceWildenstein. ISBN 978-1-930743-99-8.

External links

References