Chuck Close
Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits using a very large format camera. He adapted his painting style and working methods in 1988, after being paralyzed by an occlusion of the anterior spinal artery.
Chuck Close
August 19, 2021 (aged 81)
University of Washington (BA, 1962)
Yale University (MFA)
Photorealistic painter, photographer
Early life and education[edit]
Chuck Close was born in Monroe, Washington.[1] His father, Leslie Durward Close, died when Chuck was 11 years old. His mother's name was Mildred Wagner Close.[2] As a child, Close had a neuromuscular condition that made it difficult to lift his feet and a bout with nephritis that kept him out of school for most of sixth grade. Even when in school, he did poorly due to his dyslexia, which was not diagnosed at the time.[3]
Most of his early works were very large portraits based on photographs, using photorealism or hyperrealism, of family and friends, often other artists. Close said he had prosopagnosia (face blindness), and suggested that this condition is what first inspired him to do portraits.[4]
In an interview with Phong Bui in The Brooklyn Rail, Close described an early encounter with a Jackson Pollock painting at the Seattle Art Museum: "I went to the Seattle Art Museum with my mother for the first time when I was 14.[5] I saw this Jackson Pollock drip painting with aluminum paint, tar, gravel and all that stuff. I was absolutely outraged, disturbed. It was so far removed from what I thought art was. However, within 2 or 3 days, I was dripping paint all over my old paintings. In a way I've been chasing that experience ever since."[6]
Close attended Everett Community College in 1958–1960.[7] Local writer John Patric was an early anti-establishment intellectual influence on him, and a role model for the iconoclastic and theatric artist's persona Close learned to project in subsequent years.[8]
In 1962, Close received his B.A. from the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1961, he won a coveted scholarship to the Yale Summer School of Music and Art,[7] and the following year entered the graduate degree program at Yale University, where he received his MFA in 1964. Among Close's classmates at Yale were Brice Marden, Vija Celmins, Janet Fish, Richard Serra, Nancy Graves, Jennifer Bartlett, Robert Mangold, and Sylvia Plimack Mangold.[9]
After Yale, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna on a Fulbright grant.[10] When he returned to the United States, he worked as an art teacher at the University of Massachusetts. Close moved to New York City in 1967 and established himself in SoHo.[9]
Exhibitions[edit]
Close's first solo exhibition, held in 1967 at the University of Massachusetts Art Gallery, Amherst, featured paintings, painted reliefs, and drawings based on photographs of record covers and magazine illustrations. The exhibition captured the attention of the university administration which promptly closed it, citing the male nudity as obscene. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) came to the defense of Close and a landmark court case ensued. A Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice decided in favor of the artist against the university. When the university appealed Close chose not to return to Boston, and ultimately the decision was overturned by an appeals court.[47] (Close was later awarded an Honorary Doctorate of the Arts by the University of Massachusetts in 1995.)[47]
Close credited the Walker Art Center and its then-director Martin Friedman for launching his career with the purchase of Big Self-Portrait (1967–1968)[48] in 1969, the first painting he sold.[49] His first one-man show in New York City was in 1970 at Bykert Gallery. His first print was the focus of a "Projects" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1972. In 1979 his work was included in the Whitney Biennial and the following year his portraits were the subject of an exhibition at the Walker Art Center. His work has since been the subject of more than 150 solo exhibitions including a number of major museum retrospectives.[10] After Close abruptly canceled a major show of his work scheduled for 1997 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[50] the Museum of Modern Art announced that it would present a major midcareer retrospective of the artist's work in 1998 (curated by Kirk Varnedoe and later traveling to the Hayward Gallery, London, and other galleries in 1999).[51][52] In 2003 the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston presented a survey of his prints, which travelled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the following year.[10] His most recent retrospective – "Chuck Close Paintings: 1968/2006", at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid in 2007 – travelled to the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, Germany, and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. He also participated in almost 800 group exhibitions,[53] including documentas V (1972) and VI (1977), the Venice Biennale (1993, 1995, 2003), and the Carnegie International (1995).[29]
In 2013, Close's work was featured in an exhibit at White Cube in Bermondsey, London. "Process and Collaboration" displayed not only a number of finished prints and paintings but included plates, woodblocks, and mylar stencils which were used to produce a number of prints.[54]
In December 2014 his work was exhibited in Australia at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, which he visited.[55]
In 2016, Close's work was the subject of a retrospective at the Schack Art Center in Everett, Washington, where he attended high school and community college.[56][57]
In 2021 a solo exhibition «Chuck Close. Infinite» held at the Gary Tatintsian Gallery in Moscow, featured artist's works in various techniques including oil painting, mosaic, and tapestry. The show became the artist's last lifetime exhibition.
Close's work is in the collections of most of the great international museums of contemporary art, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern in London, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis who published Chuck Close: Self-Portraits 1967–2005 coauthored with curators Siri Engberg and Madeleine Grynsztejn.[7][58]
On July 23, 2023, The New York Times reported that a long lost painting by Close may have been recovered.[59]
Public profile[edit]
Recognition[edit]
The recipient of the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton in 2000,[60] the New York State Governor's Art Award, and the Skowhegan Arts Medal, among many others, Close received over 20 honorary degrees including one from Yale University, his alma mater.[53] In 1990, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician, and became a full Academician in 1992. New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appointed the artist to the municipality's Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission, a body mandated by the City Charter to advise the mayor and the cultural affairs commissioner.[61] Close painted President Clinton in 2006 and photographed President Barack Obama in 2012.[47] In 2010 he was appointed by Obama to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities.[10] He resigned from the President's Committee in August 2017, co-signing a letter of resignation that said in reference to President Donald Trump, "Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions."[62]
In 2005, composer Philip Glass wrote a musical portrait of Close. The composition, a 15-minute piece for solo piano, was the idea of Bruce Levingston, a concert pianist, who commissioned it through the Premiere Commission and who performed the piece at a recital at Alice Tully Hall that year.[63]
Art market[edit]
Close was represented by the Pace Gallery (in New York City) from 1977, and subsequently by White Cube (in London) from 1999.[64]
The artist's most expensive works sold at auction:
Personal life[edit]
Close lived and worked in Bridgehampton and Long Beach, New York (both on the south shore of Long Island),[9] and New York City's East Village.[86] He had two daughters with Leslie Rose.[87] They divorced in 2011. Close married artist Sienna Shields in 2013.[88] They later divorced.[89]
Close was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in 2015.[90] He died on August 19, 2021, in Oceanside, New York, at the age of 81,[85] from congestive heart failure.[91]