Chuck Close?

Question

I am doing a project on chuck close. Does anyone know specifically what people chuck close chose to paint? I read somewhere that he loved to paint his family members but i cant find it now. Did he have any criteria in who he chose to paint? I couldn't find something on google but i remember reading something about it.

Thanks very much for any information. I

Answer 1

Yes he paints his friends.

From an interview:

MR. TULLY: I was thinking when you were saying this and looking at this Samaras over there and that you had mentioned last time that it was Samaras who took Glimcher to your first show in New York. That you've done portraits of Richard Serra, you've done portraits of Phil Glass. I see there are large portrait heads of Alex Katz and Janet Fish. You were saying before about drapery and the creases weren't right or the models would get kind of saggy. All of these people meant a lot to you, apparently.

MR. CLOSE: Yes.

MR. TULLY: I thought that is also very interesting about your work.

MR. CLOSE: Actually, I'm returning to painting artists, which I haven't done for a number of years. Initially, I painted anonymous people. some of them got famous on me, but basically they were just friends and they were people by and large in the art world. Then for a period, I guess, of a number of years, I began to have friends who were not part of the art world. I thought, "If I want anonymous images, but they have to be important to me, but I don't want it to be recognized as famous folks, I'll go outside the art world." So I painted friends who were not in the art world. Then my mother died. I never painted my mother or photographed my mother -- I had been angry with her -- and, I think, now looking back the whole last number of years I've been painting my wife, my child, my children, my wife's grandmother, her parents, close friends -- that this was a very cathartic experience for me. I was an only child, my mother was an only child, my father was an only child. I have none of my original family left, so I think I felt orphaned. I think the last period of work that I did, culminating in the last few shows at Pace, have been an attempt to find my new family -- to understand where I am now. The family that I have made rather than the family that I was born into, which doesn't exist anymore. This was a very sentimental journey for me, and these are images that were incredibly important and incredibly moving for me to make and also -- as I say -- cathartic. But I feel like I've moved through the catharsis, and now I see the work I'm painting -- other artists whose work I me. Alex will kick the door open for a kind of configuration when it was absolutely couldn't have been less -- it was the least viable alternative at that moment it seemed. Lucas is somebody who for me represents the absolute pinnacle of the personal artist -- exploring his own body, and vulnerable, and he's idiosyncratic. Winds of change blow and they have no effect on him. I want to do some artists who are younger than me that were my students. Alex wasn't my teacher, but he was at Yale when I was there. And then I feel -- as somebody who kicked the door open for figuration -- I feel he was a kind of teacher in a way, even though he wasn't mine. I had asked Warhol if I could do him before he died because he was so important. We talked about the Modern's attempt to make a figuration in the '60s and how they got it in the form that they didn't want it. They got it in the form of Pop art. He was very important for me, Warhol, very important. I personally don't like the cynicism and I'm not interested in a lot of things he was interested in, but he did kick the door open as well.


here's the complete interview:
http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/close87.htm

Answer 2

Hi... there's so very much information about this incredible artist (and man!)..... that I'd tried to gather sites and books that dealt with his friends/family as portraits. I'm sure you'll find the answers within. From what I could gather he chose his subjects based on what was familar to his eye and his mind.. perhaps because of his limitations. I hope this helps... and good luck with your project!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Close
http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/close87.htm
http://www.chuckclose.coe.uh.edu/
http://www.paceprints.com/artistportfolio/artistportfolio.asp?aID=18
http://calendar.walkerart.org/canopy.wac?id=1528
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0812610.html
http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/3aa/3aa445.htm
http://www.miamiartmuseum.org/pdf/MAM%20CClose%20GNotes.pdf
http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/june97/close2.html
http://www.yoursdaily.com/culture_media/arts/chuck_close_portrait_of_the_artist
William, Bartman; Joanne Kesten (editors) (1997). The Portraits Speak: Chuck Close in Conversation with 27 of his subjects. A.R.T. Press, New York. ISBN 0923183183.
Greenberg, Jan; Sandra Jordan (1998). Chuck Close Up Close. DK Publishing. ISBN 0789426587.

Answer 3

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