Laura Arias
Professor Sharon Lintz
English 101
5/12/11
The perfection of the image captive my eye at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Looking at every detail and meticulous work surprised me. The piece, Mark, by Chuck Close, recreates all of the details of the human face onto the paper, which makes it hard to believe that it was a painting, not photography.
The artist full name is Chuck Thomas Close, an American Painter, born in Washington, in 1940. Close received his B.A. in 1962, from the University of Washington in Seattle. Then he attended graduate school at Yale University in1964. The artist then moved to Europe where he remained for a while, after he returned to the United states, he started to work as an art teacher at the University of Massachusetts.[1]
Close is known for his detailed technique in painting the human face. He is also very famous for the large scale of his work and for his Photo-Realist portraits. Photorealism is an art movement that began in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States. This type of art is done by using photography to get information, then a painting is composed and it looks real, like a photograph. Close makes up part of the first generation of American painters of Photorealism.[2] From, Close’s first solo show in 1967, he has had more than one hundred solo shows.[3]
Close suffered from a spinal artery collapse on December 7, 1988. That day he was being honored and also was going to present an award. Close was able to give his speech, after finishing, he made his way across the street to Beth Israel Medical Center where he suffered a seizure which left him paralyzed from the neck down. Close named this day the "The Event." Close had to do physical therapy, and after many months he was able to move his arms and walk, unfortunately for only a few steps with me him rely on a wheelchair. Close did not let "The Event" stop him and continued to paint by strapping a brush onto his wrist with tape.[4]
In an interview in the New York Times, Close says,
"I remember being asked by some children once, 'Do you work from photographs or can you really draw?' as if looking at a photograph means you're not really looking, as if you're cheating. I found a way of working from photographs in which verisimilitude was just an automatic byproduct of the process. But the important thing to me was always making a painting, not a likeness."[5]
Even though, Close uses a picture to guide his paintings, he adds or subtracts elements from it creating his own unique work, a painting. According to Tim Marlow, a British art historian,
[Close] has reinvented portraiture through the medium of paint, but also abstracted it. He's a painter's painter, but his reputation is still growing. I'd put him among the top 10 most important American artists since abstract expressionism, no question.'[6]
Marlow, points out that Close is able to change a picture and convert its truth to an abstraction. This ability has given Close, based on Marlow’s view, a position in 10 of America’s most important artists.
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