CHUCK CLOSE — Pioneering Master of Contemporary Portraiture and Process

Chuck Close (1940–2021) was an American painter, photographer, and printmaker whose revolutionary approach to portraiture helped define Photorealism and reshape contemporary art. Born in Monroe, Washington, Close studied at the University of Washington before earning his MFA at the Yale University School of Art, where he trained alongside many of the seminal figures of the 1960s art world. By the late 1960s, he emerged as a leading force within the Photorealist movement, although his rigorously inventive process soon placed him in a category of his own.

Close’s breakthrough came in 1968 with Big Self-Portrait, a monumental black-and-white painting that took four months to complete. Working from photographs, Close used a laborious grid method: dividing enlarged Polaroids into meticulously numbered squares and translating each one to a massive canvas with exacting precision. Using acrylic and an airbrush, he achieved astonishing clarity; he rendered every pore, hair, and tonal shift with near-clinical detail. This technique became a hallmark of his early career, establishing Close as a master of scale, precision, and perception.

Close’s portraits, often based on tightly cropped Polaroids or daguerreotypes, portray friends, artists, and cultural figures such as Philip Glass, Cindy Sherman, and Roy Lichtenstein. His gridded canvases became both technical feats and conceptual inquiries into how images are made, perceived, and reconstructed.

In 1988, Close experienced a spinal artery collapse that left him paralyzed from the neck down. Rather than ending his career, this challenge prompted a radical reinvention. Working with assistants and using a brush strapped to his wrist, he developed a new mosaic-like painterly language that was vibrant, abstract, and optically layered forms that cohered into faces only when viewed from a distance. This late-career innovation was celebrated as one of the most remarkable transformations in modern art.

While we do not currently have works by this artist in inventory, we offer sourcing services for blue-chip artworks and can assist with acquisition opportunities upon request.

Photorealists frequently used a grid technique to enlarge a photograph and reduce each square to formal elements of design. Each grid was its own little work of art. Many of the Photorealists used the airbrush technique. Big Self-Portrait, in black and white, was the first of Close's mural-sized works painted from photographs. This painting took four months to complete.

To make this work, Close took several photographs of himself in which his head and neck filled the frame. From these he selected one of the images and made two 11 x 14-inch enlargements. On one of the photographs he drew a grid, then lettered and numbered each square. Using both the gridded and ungridded photographs, he carefully transferred the photographic image square by square onto a large canvas measuring 107 1/2 x 83 1/2 inches. He used acrylic paint and an airbrush to include every detail.

When Close was making his painting he was concerned with the visual elements--shapes, textures, volume, shadows, and highlights--of the photograph itself. He also was interested in how a photograph shows some parts of the image in focus, or sharp, and some out-of-focus, or blurry. In this portrait the tip of the cigarette and the hair on the back of his head were both out-of-focus in the photograph so he painted them that way in Big Self-Portrait.

Artists frequently change their style of work and Close experienced a tragedy that subsequently influenced his painting style. In 1988, he had a spinal blood clot, which left him a quadriplegic, unable to move either his legs or his arms. With a paint brush clamped between his teeth, he developed a new way to paint. His portraits, the photos, and canvases were gridded off by assistants and then he used his mouth brush to paint, using the techniques of grisaille and pointillism within the grids. This is similar to technique used by the Impressionists and Pointillists. The result was still a canvas of mini-paintings, which when viewed from a distance are seen as a single or unified image.