Chuck Close

"If you think about the late 60s, painting seemed like a senseless activity. If you were dumb enough to make a painting, it had better be abstract. It was even dumber to make a representational image. Then the dumbest, most moribund, out-of-date and shopworn of all possible things you could do was make a portrait."
Chuck Close, quoted by Douglas R. Nickel in Chuck Close: Self-Portraits 1967-2005, Walker Art Center/San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Chuck Close was born in Monroe, Washington, in 1940 and studied visual art at Yale University. Photography has been an integral part of his painting process since the mid-60s, and later became a body of work in its own right. Close has also distinguished himself as a master of printmaking. Since 1967 his work has been the subject of more than 100 major exhibitions throughout the world.

MONOGRAPHS & CATALOGS

Chuck Close: A Couple of Ways of Doing Something Interview by Lyle Rexer. Poetry by Bob Holman. A Couple of Ways of Doing Something replicates a deluxe limited-edition portfolio whose initial run was only 75 copies. This clothbound edition preserves the luxurious sensibility of the original with 22
go to book page >>
APERTURE
ISBN: 9781597110181
$50.00 | In stock

Chuck Close: Self-Portraits 1967-2005 Essays by Siri Engberg, Madeleine Grynsztejn and Douglas R. Nickel. Foreword by Kathy Halbreich and Neal Benezra. A celebrated, popular and influential figure in American art, Chuck Close has focused exclusively, and with great innovation, on the genre of portraiture. This exhibition, co-organized by the San Francisco Museum
go to book page >>
WALKER ART CENTER/SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
ISBN: 9780935640809
$34.95 | Not available

Chuck Close Edited by Robert Storr. Essays by Kirk Varnedoe and Deborah Wye. Foreword by Glenn D. Lowry. The most comprehensive assessment of Chuck Close's work yet published, this volume accompanied a mid-career retrospective exhibition that opened at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, on February 25, 1998.
go to book page >>
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK
ISBN: 9780870700668
$50.00 | Not available

Chuck Close

Chuck Close: A Couple of Ways of Doing Something

Interview by Lyle Rexer. Poetry by Bob Holman.
Published by Aperture

A Couple of Ways of Doing Something replicates a deluxe limited-edition portfolio whose initial run was only 75 copies. This clothbound edition preserves the luxurious sensibility of the original with 22 extraordinary oversized daguerreotypes printed in rich tritone. Working with daguerreotype master Jerry Spagnoli to conquer the complexities of this venerable process, which yields images of astonishing detail and gravity, Chuck Close photographed many of the same artist-friends who have made regular appearances in his paintings over the years: Laurie Anderson, Lyle Ashton Harris, Cecily Brown, Gregory Crewdson, Carroll Dunham, Ellen Gallagher, Philip Glass, Bob Holman, Elizabeth Murray, Elizabeth Peyton, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, James Siena, Lorna Simpson, Kiki Smith, James Turrell, Robert Wilson, Terry Winters, Lisa Yuskavage and himself. Each image is complemented by a poem on its subject by Bob Holman, the celebrated and widely published New York School poet who originated and hosted the famous Poetry Slams at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and now runs the Bowery Poetry Club. With the counterpoint of Holman's engaging poetry, the collected work becomes a transfixing group portrait of Close's influential and highly creative circle of friends and colleagues, as well as an exploration of a challenging photographic medium. A traveling exhibition of the work will launch in November 2006 at the Aperture Gallery.

Chuck Close: Self-Portraits 1967-2005

Essays by Siri Engberg, Madeleine Grynsztejn and Douglas R. Nickel. Foreword by Kathy Halbreich and Neal Benezra.
Published by Walker Art Center/San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

A celebrated, popular and influential figure in American art, Chuck Close has focused exclusively, and with great innovation, on the genre of portraiture. This exhibition, co-organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, explores the artist's work in self-portraiture over four decades and across a variety of media, including painting, drawing, photography, collage, and printmaking. The first comprehensive museum survey of Close's self-portraits, the exhibition and its accompanying publication offer a fascinating glimpse of an artist's self-examination and evolution over time and elucidate his unbounded, process-driven experimentation with media and techniques. Working with the seemingly narrow subject of his own face, Close has produced a richly varied trove that ranges from intimately scaled collage maquettes and fingerprint drawings to monumental gridded canvases; from the sharp definition of certain photographic techniques to the ghostly blurs of daguerreotypes and holograms; from the tactile complexity of paper pulp editions to the smooth, mechanical surfaces of Polaroids and digital ink-jet prints; from the subtle tonalities of gray-scale paintings and drawings to the exuberance of an 111-color screenprint. When Close unleashes his imagination on his own visage, this familiar figure is at his most revealing.

Chuck Close

Edited by Robert Storr. Essays by Kirk Varnedoe and Deborah Wye. Foreword by Glenn D. Lowry.
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York

The most comprehensive assessment of Chuck Close's work yet published, this volume accompanied a mid-career retrospective exhibition that opened at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, on February 25, 1998. A leading figure in the New York art world since the early 1970s, Close has recently concentrated on portraits of his artist friends and colleagues, characterized by colorful patterning and vivid brushwork. Subjects include Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Alex Katz, Kiki Smith, Lucas Samaras and Lorna Simpson. Here, more than 90 paintings, prints, drawings and photographs are reproduced, along with details and comparative illustrations.