Chuck Close: A Retrospective
by Robert Storr

Publisher:  The Museum of Modern Art, 1998
ISBN:  0870700677

For the past three decades, Chuck Close has claimed the human face as his sole terrain. His oversized, closely cropped images demand attention. This catalog, from Close's recent retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City offers an opportunity to view his evolution and his contrasting approaches to the human face. More than 90 images of his work, analytical essays and a candid interview with the artist help document the career of one of America's most prolific artists.

Big Self-Portrait, 1967-68, is a bold, in-your-face image painted when Close was an unknown, struggling artist. His early, airbrushed black and white images reproduced the smallest details, flaws and lines of his subjects' faces. Unidentified sitters are treated in a cool, unemotional manner, contrasting with the intimacy shown in his portraits of friends and family. This is especially true of the images of his artist friends - Elizabeth Murray, Lucas Samaras, Alex Katz, Roy Lichtenstein, Kiki Smith, Lorna Simpson, and Robert Rauschenberg, which offer a glimpse of the relationship shared between the artist and his subjects.

In contrast, the Chuck Close of the nineties is an internationally celebrated artist. While many artists commercialize their work after achieving fame, Close continues to evolve and to create based on his own perception of art. Throughout his career he has produced a single commission - the 1998 portrait of Bill Clinton. His current works, such as Self-Portrait, 1997, exhibit a different kind of boldness, less dependent on drama than an increased emphasis on the actual act of painting. The youthful tightness is still evident in the precision of the strokes, but there is a new freedom and a vibrant use of color. His playful grids converge, when viewed from a distance, to create a powerful portrait with images as elusive as his earlier work.

Painters will be particularly interested in the detail enlargements of some of Close's portraits. Details of his early works show the exacting brushstrokes - individual hairs in beards and eyebrows, the reflections in his subjects eyes and the lines and pores of the skin which contribute to his disturbingly-photographic style. The grids on his recent work when enlarged show intricate, vibrant, abstract works that combine to create his new portraits, but could stand-alone as individual works of art.

Close's work is contemporary, but not because of its similarities to computer-generated art. It combines his long-standing interest in Abstract Impressionism and a wide range of brilliant colors, with his self-imposed rules for creating portraits. Within the catalog, an essay by Robert Storr entitled, Angles of Refraction, explores Close's painting evolution, his influences, and his relationship with his contemporaries within the New York art world. He continues to stretch the boundaries of realism into a fusion of abstract art and realism, creating a style that is pure "Close".

While most of his peers are in semi-retirement, Close continues to produce his massive portraits at an astonishing rate. Even more extraordinary because in 1988 at the supposed height of his career, Chuck Close suffered a crippling aneurysm in his spinal column. The resulting paralysis has confined his body, but not his creativity, to a motorized wheelchair. Close proved that he would paint again by producing his still-massive images at a passionate rate and taking his work to the next level. In a candid interview, Close talks about the early days of his career and his aesthetic development, focusing on his passion for exploring the human face.

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