How Close Is Close?
Up Close and Personal with Chuck Close's Friends

Linda's friends have joined her. You may remember Linda as the name of a large photorealistic portrait that is part of Akron Art Museum’s permanent collection and had been on display for years. Chuck Close painted this portrait in the 1970s by emulating the four-color printing process, building up cyan, magenta, yellow and black colored paints so seamlessly that the final painting shows no sign of the layers, but a super-realistic, large-scale painting.

People have been painting portraits for as far back as history can show us, but what is significant about Chuck Close is that he broke down and apart the art of portraiture, and built it back in ways that are novel, dynamic and moving. The artist repeatedly painted a small collection of faces. In the beginning of his carrier, he was overwhelmed by the entire face, so he used the grid to map photos he took of his subjects. While initially the grid was undetectable in the final piece, over time the grid subtly began to be a visible part of the finished works, and at last, the integral element. Set on a diagonal, the grid allowed the artist to focus on each piece of the image, rather the then the whole painting, but in the end, the whole work is much greater than the sum of those small abstractions. If you stand close to a more recent Close painting, you can become disoriented from the intensity of the colors. Slowly stepping back and away, the face emerges from the mayhem. What seemed to be disorder becomes a logical conclusion and here is this giant, tightly-cropped face starring back at you, wondering what you looking at!

While his work is remarkable, what is most intriguing is the back story of the artist himself. Chuck Close grew up with a few disabilities: He is dyslexic and has prosopagnosia, which means he has difficulty recognizing faces. Traditional schooling made him painfully aware of his lack of ability to write essays, do math, etc., so he excelled in what he could do, which was art. Rather than writing a report for history he could paint the scene, to show his teachers that he understood and was learning the material. He was tutored in art, then went on to receive and B. A., then graduate school at Yale. When he finally landed out of school and into life as a professional he painter, Close found himself not knowing what to do. His limitations had guided him from childhood, and without them he was lost. He set about creating his own set of strict rules, as limitations to his abilities, so that he could excel and grow in other areas. For instance, he was always told he had a great sense of color, so he decided he would only use neutral tones at first, so the final piece appears to be black and white.

In 1988 he suffered a catastrophic spinal artery collapse, which rendered him paralyzed from the neck down. While he has regained limited use of his limbs, he continues to paint with a brush strapped to his wrist. His giant canvasses hang at an angle in his studio and he remotely powers a lift to move the one he is working on at the time, so that the area he is painting is directly in front of him, as he works in his wheel chair.

What I find most compelling about Chuck Close, is that while he had use of his hands, his work was mostly photorealistic, you could not find evidence in the final work of his hands, no brush strokes. Now that he has extremely limited use of his hands, the entire large-scale pieces are obviously hand-brushed swirls, loops and blobs. When he could move and function freely, the subjects he painted were from photos he took with an extremely narrow depth of field, so that they are perfectly still, only the slightest plane in focus, freezing time and motion. Now that he is extremely limited in his motion, his art nearly vibrate off the canvasses, because of the juxtaposition of the color in the abstract shapes in the grid. Once again, Chuck Close is guided by his disability.

Works in oils, fingerprints, scribbled markers, Jacquard loom sewing, pulp-paper collage, etchings, screen prints, rubber stampings, woodcuts and even a work by Vik Muniz emulating Chuck Close's unique style, by creating a portrait of Close in Pantone (printer's inks) color swatches can be seen at the Akron Art Museum through January 3rd, 2010.

By the way, you can see Linda and other of Chuck Close’s friends in Up Close and Personal with Chuck Close's Friends, for free on the first Sunday of November, December and January, because the museum is no charge the first Sunday of every month. http://www.AkronArtMuseum.org

Photo credits: Chuck Close, Self-Portrait Screenprint, 2007, screenprint in 203 colors, 74 ½ x 57 ¾ in. (image and sheet), Private Collection, Photo courtesy Pace Editions, Inc. © Chuck Close, courtesy Pace Editions, Inc. Chuck Close, Linda, 1975-76, acrylic on linen, 108 x 84 in., Collection of the Akron Art Museum, Purchased with funds from an anonymous contribution, an anonymous contribution in honor of Ruth C. Roush and the Museum Acquisition Fund 1982.3, Photo by: Ellen Page Wilson / Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York. © Chuck Close, courtesyPaceWildenstein, New York.

Carol Drummond has been a professional designer for 25 years. Prior to starting her award-winning graphic design studio 15 years ago, Drummond Design, she graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, worked at a graphic design studio, a video production company, and a consumer products company. She has been an art docent for Mayfield City Schools and currently serves on the COSE Arts Network Advisory Committee. http://www.DrummonDesign.com