Up Close and Impersonal

Chuck Close, now the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Modern, I am having a harder time of it. I was familiar with his work before, and I disliked it. Then I saw the Modern’s exhibition, and I felt that there was more here than I had at first conceived. And then I saw it a second time, and I felt that my assessment had to be revised downward again.

My tentativeness about Close’s art is odd since it is very much the essence of his paintings that they should disclose themselves with almost breathless speed and obviousness. Their effect is equivalent to a sudden clarion blast—followed by total silence. Each work is a massive image of a face in which, especially in the earlier ones, the suppression of all subtlety and all nuance is the predominant point. Though Close renders his sitters’ features down to the merest nick, pore, follicle, and stub, he scrupulously avoids referring to his images as portraits. Rather he calls them “heads.” They are based on photographs, usually taken by Close, which are then engrafted faithfully onto the canvas in the manner of the Photorealists of the Seventies, a group with whom, nevertheless, he prefers not to be identified.

JG

About the Author

James Gardner

Chuck Close, now the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Modern, I am having a harder time of it. I was familiar with his work before, and I disliked it. Then I saw the Modern’s exhibition, and I felt that there was more here than I had at first conceived. And then I saw it a second time, and I felt that my assessment had to be revised downward again.

My tentativeness about Close’s art is odd since it is very much the essence of his paintings that they should disclose themselves with almost breathless speed and obviousness. Their effect is equivalent to a sudden clarion blast—followed by total silence. Each work is a massive image of a face in which, especially in the earlier ones, the suppression of all subtlety and all nuance is the predominant point. Though Close renders his sitters’ features down to the merest nick, pore, follicle, and stub, he scrupulously avoids referring to his images as portraits. Rather he calls them “heads.” They are based on photographs, usually taken by Close, which are then engrafted faithfully onto the canvas in the manner of the Photorealists of the Seventies, a group with whom, nevertheless, he prefers not to be identified.