Chuck Close

I am enrolled in Art History at my school right now. We are nearing the end of the curriculum, and are beginning review to prepare for the upcoming AP exam. In the class, we learn about many artists and art pieces throughout history. I am going to talk about one specific one that I've taken a liking to.

Chuck Close is an artist from the photorealism era of the 20th century. The main point of this style is to create a completely realistic piece, even tricking the viewer into thinking it's real.

This is such a great photo. Except not really. Because it's not a photo. This is a freaking painting. Ridiculous.

Chuck Close really wows me with his work. The particular painting above is a self-portrait done in acrylic paints. He also would do portraits of his family and friends, but never did any special effects with them. By that, I mean he rarely showed his subjects in flattering ways.






Oh yeah, and they were also always HUGE. I can only imagine how long it takes him to do each piece.



One specific technique that Close uses, is blurring the parts of the head that recede. You can usually see around the hair or back of the head, that it looks out of focus. This contributes to the realism of the painting, because the same effect happens in actual photographs, and real life.

Later in Close's life, he started a new kind of style. I'm fairly sure that this new style was mainly his own, but I do not know what it's called. So here's a few examples:






This new style makes use of a gridlike pattern, with what seems to be random colors swirled in each square. However, every color is carefully selected, because when you look from a distance at the completed piece, you can see the portrait that becomes of the color squares.

This is sort of the same concept of Impressionism, where the eye blurs together the brush strokes to create the whole image. Obviously, Close uses his own unique technique in doing so.