American Art History - Essay Example

Chuck Close The American artist Charles Thomas Close (later known as “Chuck was born in 1940 in Monroe, Washington and studied Art at the University of Washington at Seattle. He was successful immediately after graduation has continued to work and exhibit until 1988 when he suffered a serious illness which left him paralysed and confined to a wheelchair. This was a devastating blow for a man who liked to paint on large canvases but he has continued to paint and exhibit despite this major challenge. Close is now one of America’s most respected contemporary artists. He is perhaps best known as a portrait painter but critics have found it difficult to categorize him much more accurately beyond that. The Encyclopaedia Britannica cites his “large-scale Photo-Realist” portraits as his most famous achievement while the Oxford Dictionary of Art labels his early work as “Abstract Expressionist” and his later work as “Superrealism”. Many commentators (Sultan, 2003) have regarded his work in the medium of print to be even more significant than his paintings and it is certainly true that photography and print media have influenced his painting, as well as being major works of art in their own right. Throughout his life Chuck close has given interviews and collaborated on many books and television programmes (see for example Finch, 2007) which gives critics a good insight into his life and thought. His childhood was in some ways difficult, because of illness in the family and his own learning difficulties. Nowadays he would have no doubt been diagnosed with dyslexia and coached out of his rather individual way of seeing things, but as it was, he used his disability with words to focus on what he was good at, namely art. He has an exceptional awareness of his own artistic development and an uncanny talent for finding new techniques. While still a student Close was fascinated by prints and photography, citing Jasper Johns as an early influence (Sultan 10). He was a student in the 1960s, and experienced the blossoming of Pop Art first hand. The work of Johns and Warhol opened up a whole new field of exploration where the boundaries between collage and paint, between commercial silk screen printing and traditional fine art painting seemed to be merged. Multiple repetitions of the same subject were made in different colors and on a huge scale, highlighting these artists’ ability to frame even very ordinary items in unusual ways and change our perception of these items. Images such as the cans of soup and the Marylin Monroe portraits have become icons of this generation. While Close could not fail to be influenced by the New York art scene of the 1960s, he chose to follow a very different direction. His earliest work shares this magnification of scale, and the realistic depiction of the subject matter, but it turns away from a celebration of color and from commercial subject and celebrities. His Big Self Portrait (1967-8) uses a very restricted palette of greys and although it is clearly painted, it has the appearance of a blown up photograph. It is not at all like a commercial Hollywood marketing kind of image, however. It shows an unshaven, unclothed head and shoulders, with wild hair, a half smoked cigarette and a glazed expression from behind thick, ugly glasses. It is a very accurate reflection of the “Woodstock generation” who so appalled middle class America with their insolence, drugs and “drop out” mentality, and it seems deliberately to provoke the viewer. This painting presents the artist as an outsider and a rebel, more like a criminal being photographed by the police than an artist presenting his best side to an adoring public. The history of the portrait genre shows that the social context of the painting is always a factor, along with the relationship between painter and subject, and the degree to which the painter presents a true “likeness” and the degree to which he makes the image a generic type which will fit in with others of that time and place. (West, 2004 22). Renaissance painters used props and costumes to indicate the social standing of the subject, and most formal portraits were commissioned by the sitter or some wealthy patron. Portrait collections in museums and galleries throughout the ages contain a large proportion of famous kings, popes, businessmen and bigwigs of all sorts. In Victorian times portraits of lovers, children, even pets were cherished by their owners. In these contexts the subjects were painted in a flattering manner. This tradition is continued today in fields like music and politics. Close chose instead to paint his friends and relatives in unadorned and sometimes even frankly dishevelled states. He did not bother to record even their surnames in the painting titles. This uncompromising approach to his subject was carried on by Close in his future portrait paintings. Keith/Mezzotint (1972) is again a male head and shoulders. Close used a grid to transfer the material square by tiny square from a photograph to the final image. Nowadays everyone is familiar with computers, pixels and digital technology but back in the 1960s and 1970s these technologies were in their infancy. Close really did spend laborious hours transferring images from Polaroid stills onto plates, or canvas, or paper, and the result was indeed very like that of a blown up black and white photograph. Close was obsessive about every step of the production, and he developed close working relationships with printers and technicians. “Collaboration is the key”, he said, “My prints have been truly collaborative, even though control is something that I give up reluctantly” (Sultan and Shiff, 2003 10). In 1973/74 the painting Robert/104072 pushed this technique still further, to the extent that the grid becomes a clearly visible part of the picture. The number 104072 in the picture’s title refers to the number of tiny squares in the underlying grid. As photograph technology improved further, so did Close improve his techniques, especially in relation to color. Early Polaroid photography used only three colors, magenta, cyan and yellow and Close perversely started to paint his grid squares in layers of only these three colors (Sultan and Shiff, 26). He seemed to be most creative when he imposed upon himself the strictest possible of technical limitations. In 1985 Close painted Fanny using black paint on his hands to leave an image composed entirely of the whorls and lines of his fingerprints. After the terrible illness that left Close hardly able to move his hands from 1988 onwards, it became impossible for him to work in the finely detailed, pointillist manner that he had made his trademark. Characteristically, however, he did not give up, but simply increased the scale still further and began painting larger blobs with a brush strapped to his wrist! The later paintings have a softer tone. Family portraits have a gentler gaze, and the color palette is much warmer. The older Close has mellowed. The range of paintings that Close has produced is neither very large nor very broad in subject matter. One of the reasons for this is that most of the works are so labor intensive that they take months and in some cases years to finish. Lately he has abandoned his rather casual, first names only portrait approach and has begun to tackle major political figures and the international limelight. Even here, however, he insists on an irreverent take and a thoroughly realist approach. He told a London (Sooke, 2007) journalist that he insisted on painting the bags under Clinton’s eyes because he liked the “warts and all approach” and he liked the very features that the portrait subjects hate to be revealed. The contours of the face, meticulously transferred in layer by layer of abstract little dots, lines and lozenges in close up are transformed by some kind of “magic” into a realistic likeness when viewed from a distance. This painting, one of his latest works, makes some concessions to the traditional portrait genre. Clinton’s head and shoulders are set slightly at an angle, he is smiling, and the painting is in color. Perhaps, at last, the rebel has joined the establishment. Despite Close’s claims that the portrait is “goofy”, (Sooke, 2007) the Clinton charm is still evident through the psychedelic pixels. Close is currently experimenting with tapestry and no doubt will go on to find yet more techniques to assist him in his mission to get closer and closer to the physical properties of the image. He has done more than any other modern artist to explore the way that the human eye perceives color and form in close up and from a distance, using techniques from photography, print and other media. His huge, arresting images will be a lasting record of his experiments along the boundary line between human and digital art. Works Cited. Close, Chuck. Big Self Portrait. 1967/68. Acrylic on Canvas. Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis. Close, Chuck. Keith/Mezzotint. 1972. Mezzotint, plate. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Close, Chuck. Robert/104,072. 1973/74. Synthetic polymer paint and ink with graphite on gessoed canvas. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Close, Chuck. Fanny.1985. Fingerpainting. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Close, Chuck. President Bill Cinton. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art. Washington. Encyclopaedia Britannica article on “Chuck Close” available at: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/122091/Chuck-Close Finch, Christopher. 2007. Chuck Close: Work. New York: Prestel Publishing. Print. Oxford Dictionary of Art article on Chuck Close available at: http://www.enotes.com/oxford-art-encyclopedia/close-chuck Sooke, Alistair. 2007. Chuck Close: Capturing the Clinton Charisma. Daily Telegraph. 6th October 2007. London. Print. Also available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3668349/Chuck-Close-Capturing-the-Clinton-charisma.html Sultan, Terrie and Shiff, Richard (eds). 2003. Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Print. West, Shearer. 2004. Portraiture. Oxford History of Art. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Read More