Chuck Close And Photorealism - Research Paper Example

Chuck Close And Photorealism s Introduction The twentieth century was marked by the outstanding surgeof the various art forms and genres, for culture and particularly visual art were greatly impacted by historical events and new social tendencies. This period in art history fostered reconsideration of and sometimes distancing from traditional basic concepts in painting due to changes in the artists’ world perception and emerging development trends of the society. While the first half of the century was dominated by powerful trends in abstract art, the latter half, beginning with the 1960s, has seen the rise of overwhelming consumerism and popular culture. The range of artists working during that period is rather wide, while many of their artworks have become the brilliant specimens of styles and techniques. Among them, the artistic legacy of Chuck Close, a talented American painter, is comprised by the works of photorealism on the large scale and presents a principally new stage of visual art evolution in accordance with demands and opportunities of the epoch. This artist’s work signifies a fresh and creative approach to human portraiture; his artistic search has led him through a wide variety of means, instruments and techniques and depiction; while photorealism that acquired a remarkable place in his legacy has been affecting modern tendencies in visual art as well. Chuck Close shows that the true modern artist should be familiar with a wide range of instruments including technological devices in order to create a plausible, fascinating illusion of reality based on naturalism and pragmatism of the contemporary society. Moreover, the painting Frank created by Close in late 1960s defined the artist’s further style development and peculiarities of his perception of detalization and interplay of shape and size. Chuck Close: overview A graduate of the Yale University School of Art and once a teacher of arts in University of Massachusetts, Chuck Close became a significant figure in artistic society of the latter half of the twentieth century known for his remarkable style of painting large-scale portraits. “Close learned to paint like an Abstract Expressionist when he was a student at Yale”1. Yet, while the painter’s preferences in his tuition years centered mainly on abstract impressionism, training in Europe and the MFA program have added a pinch of more modern trends including minimalism and pop art. However, the artists managed to choose the domain for his work rather early: human faces and their versatile portrayals in photography and paint became the major course for the artist’s development, while the painterly style and instruments changed for several times. During his teaching career in Amherst, the painter experimented with pop-inspired elements in portraiture, engaging photographic images for the first time in his work: those were the daring and large realistic pictures of nude models including Bid Nude of 1967. However, it was his Big Self-Portrait (1968) that served as an important milestone in development of his style, for this painting literally opened the series of the famous photorealistic ‘heads’ on a larger-than-life scale and with exaggerated and unflattering manner of depiction, his friends and family as models, first in grayscale and then in color. Later period of Close’ work – 1980s – was marked by domination of pointillism and presentation of such works as, for example, Georgia (1985). Unfortunately, in the late 1980s, the tragic event left the painter practically paralyzed – in December of 1988, Close was diagnosed with the collapse of a spinal artery. However, the painter did not give up his creative work and continued to paint, applying the skills of working with nontraditional methods and tools he had acquired long before this event. Moreover, the period after his partial recovery is comprised by one more transformation in his artistic vision and transition to ‘grid’ portraits that brought him true recognition. In addition, in would be interesting to note that the painter’s initial interest towards human faces is related to the disorder referred to as face blindness: painting portraits of people around him, the painter not only constructs the unique manner of viewing reality, but also makes it easier for himself to remember and recognize faces. Frank (1969) The oversized portrait of Frank James, a student of the School of Visual Arts where Close worked as a teacher2 which was painted in 1969 can be characterized as one of the painter’s pilot works in the style of photorealism. Frank is enormous in size - 108 x 84 inches – and painted in classical acrylic paint on canvas. However, the technique of painting as well as its style is rather daring for the time of 1960s, for the picture copies the photographic image with scrupulous detalization and precision. The key peculiarity of the painting process is that the painter did not portray an actual model sitting in front of him; instead, a photograph of Frank served as the model. Such decision therefore gave Close an exceptional opportunity to scrutinize each and every small detail of the young man’s appearance and consequently copy the photograph on a large canvas. In this manner, the viewer can notice not only amazing meticulousness of copying, but also the way this painting is perceived due to its large scale. That is, one would not notice the entire portrait at once: instead, small details like nostrils, hair on Frank’s chin, dark eyes or the reflection on his glasses catch the viewer’s attention first, while it takes some time to seize the whole portrait. When looking at the painting piece by piece, one can interpret the peculiar surface of the picture in a different, more elaborate, manner: the details of skin can be viewed as simply pores or hair on the larger scale, but become similar to a monochrome abstract pattern with a closer examination. Another fascinating aspect of Frank is that photographic style of depiction is preserved so carefully there is a simulated area of focus, that is, the way photo camera ‘sees’ objects of reality is copied, while areas beyond focus are left blurred. By this method, Close literally directed the viewers’ attention to the certain area of the picture just as an average camera lens does. However, the model in the picture seems rather distanced despite of being painted on such a scale – even his eyes are hidden in the shadow, while the countenance is free of any emotions. Thuswise, Chuck Close created a detailed and objective – even documentary – portrayal of his acquaintance’s appearance, but he did not enclose the personal element in this portrait, leaving the viewer to speculate over what kind of personality Frank is, what he feels and what the painter’s attitude towards him. Development of style The peculiar style of Chuck Close has undergone long and wide-scale process of development, while discovery of photorealism took place virtually at the beginning of his career. The painter always sought to expand the scope of his contribution to art of portraiture and thus tried to master various techniques of painting, drawing and constructing the image. The range of media applied by Close at different stages of his artistic development is also rather wide: ink, pastel, graphite, acrylic paint, watercolor, crayons. He tried silkscreen printing invented by Warhol, finger painting, woodcuts, etching, paper collage, airbrush, linocuts, photographs (Polaroid), tapestries and other techniques to form his artistic identity and find the unique style of portrayal. Although close used to experiment with abstract impressionism at the dawn of his career, he eventually preferred more figurative constructions for depiction, beginning his period of hyperrealism with a series of paintings depicting female nudity with striking verisimilitude. The paintings were exact copies of monochrome photographs painted in color. A distinctive feature of Close’ stylistic evolution is certainly his attention to the process of painting and its emotional component that was probably preserved from his expressionist endeavors. The essence of process for the painter is – according to the view of – the continuous process of instruments substitution and solution of his painting3 challenges. It is known that the painter created a peculiar concept of painting for himself, seeking to make creating art difficult for himself via substitution of the traditional paintbrush technique. That is, the toolbox of the artist was transformed with help of instruments that were inherently less suitable for painting. As a result, the process of creating an artwork acquired greater value. Even more, as the process of painting has been based on the photograph, either in color or in black-and-white, the artist’s primary task is to capture reality with a camera, and this means that Close needs to be a professional in photography, too. Photorealism in Close’ work The aforementioned meticulousness found the greatest reflection in Chuck Close’ work though his large series of photorealistic portraits, which have virtually defined his style for years. Photorealism, or hyperrealism, as a style in painting was rather popular in the latter half of the twentieth century and balanced photographic precision in depiction of reality with their dramatic alienation. Meisel suggested a set of typical characteristics of photorealism: for example, using a camera to collect information for painting, applying mechanic instruments to transmit the information onto the canvas, and making the result of the work purely photographic4. In its aesthetical orientation and practical aspect, hyperrealism is rather close to pop art, the primary commonality being complex figurative nature of the image and composition. As it can be noticed from the portrait of Frank James, precise, unbiased and unemotional replication of reality. Such copying virtually imitates specific nature of photography with its documental precision and automatism of visual capture. At the same time, photorealism presupposes ‘technological’ and smooth character of the image. That is, the painters deliberately remove painterly texture of the image with help of aerography, glazing, and emulsion layers. In such a manner, the painting literally ‘looses’ its natural texture and becomes increasingly similar to a printed photograph – not only in precision of depiction, but also in the character of surface. Daily life can be considered as the key motif for photorealistic painting – urban environment, advertising or detailed portraits of ordinary people. In Close’ work, we see a wide range of realistic portraits of usual people free of fancy background, with attention focused on their faces only. Pursuing a goal of creating not just realistic, but even overrealistic depiction of the world, the painters tend to use various mechanical and technological means. Particularly, there is the famous grid technique widely used by Chuck Close both in his early realistic works and in his later stylistic transitions. Making a photograph the basis of the portrait, the artists grids it and then constructs the wide-scale image onto canvas: “Close or an assistant will usually mark a grid pattern on a photograph and then onto a canvas, maintaining the same proportions”5. The image is transmitted carefully and methodically, stroke by stroke. Thereby, the big ‘decision’ is divided into many small decisions, i.e. each grid stands for itself, and Close methodically achieves photographic veracity in each part of the painting separately. However, assembled together, the grids form a realistic picture, and Frank is a brilliant example of true and unbiased portrayal of reality by means of gridding and photography. From photorealism to pixels The later paintings of Chuck Close differ significantly from his earlier photorealistic canvases, yet the emphasis on the process and the process itself remain unchanged. Even more, the artist’s experience in photorealism seems to have prepared the foundations for further development of his portraiture style. Beginning with late 1980s, Close engaged in creating fascinating pixelated artworks, preserving his propensity for large-scale canvases and gridding of photographs as a basic process of image construction. Gridding the photos and canvases, copies grid by grid creating “marks”, cells filled with color6. Each grid is filled with certain shades of paint (often contrasting) in rings, and the viewer is able to perceive the so-called average hue of each mark from the distance. Again, the toolbox for this creative process contains nonstandard and diverse instruments – rags, power drill with an eraser, airbrush and razor blades. The peculiar style achieved by Close after 1990 is based on complex relations between size and shape, while photorealism remains the stem and the prototype enhanced by the painter according to his changing perceptions. Moreover, the effect achieved by the current painting technique is often that of a human face behind glass or of a reflection rippling in the water surface: for instance, Shirley (2007), Susan (2011), Self-Portrait (1997) and others. Although these gridded paintings look fragmented from the small distance, they form an easily recognizable and identifiable figurative whole. The tendency towards application of pixelization in painting might be perceived as a skillful allusion to the legacy of Gustav Klimt, for Klimt, an Austrian Secessionist of the early 20th century, often ‘infused’ geometric elements similar to Close’ marks into his paintings. In other words, Close seems to have revived use of geometry in figurative depiction as he entered the third stylistic phase and endowed his photorealistic vision with more complex optical presentation. Conclusion Being one of the most renowned American artists of the twentieth century and a leading painter in photographic realism, Chuck Close has gone through the long and productive evolution in style, though his focus on figurativeness has persisted until modern days. Thereby, the purely photorealistic phase of his career was a result of artistic search and has produced a great impact on further development of his style, while the discussed painting Frank can be considered a perfect specimen of photographic realism in the painter’s legacy. References: Meisel, Louis K. Photorealism. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1980. Pelli, Denis G. "Close Encounters--An Artist Shows that Size Affects Shape. (cover story)." Science 285, no. 5429 (August 6, 1999): 844. MasterFILE Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed December 2, 2015). Ravin, James G., & Odell, Peter M. “Pixels and Painting: Chuck Close and the Fragmented Image.” Arch Ophthalmology. 126(8) (2008):1148-1151. Accessed December 3, 2015. doi:10.1001/archopht.126.8.1148 Stokes, Patricia D. "Thinking Inside the Tool Box: Creativity, Constraints, and the Colossal Portraits of Chuck Close." Journal Of Creative Behavior 48 (2014), no. 4: 276-289.Education Research Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed December 2, 2015). Storr, Robert, Close, Chuck, Varnedoe, Kirk & Wye, Deborah. Chuck Close. The Museum of Modern Art, 1998. Accessed December 3, 2015. https://books.google.com/books?id=EKG7V7uOaxYC&dq=chuck+close+frank&hl=ru&source=gbs_navlinks_s Read More