Chuck Close
Chuck Close
Charles Thomas "Chuck" Closeis an American painter/artist and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits. Close often paints abstract portraits, that are shown in the world's finest galleries. Although a catastrophic spinal artery collapse in 1988 left him severely paralyzed, he has continued to paint and produce work that remains sought after by museums and collectors. Close lives and works in Bridgehampton, New York and Long Beach, NY and New York City's East Village. His first...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth5 July 1940
CityMonroe, WA
CountryUnited States of America
If the bottom dropped out of the market and the artist was not going to sell anything, he or she will keep working, and the dealer will keep trying to find some way to convince somebody to buy this stuff.
The reason I don't like realist, photorealist, neorealist, or whatever, is that I am as interested in the artificial as I am in the real.
I knew from the age of five what I wanted to do. The one thing I could do was draw. I couldn't draw that much better than some of the other kids, but I cared more and I wanted it badly.
I can't always reach the image in my mind... almost never, in fact... so that the abstract image I create is not quite there, but it gets to the point where I can leave it.
Painting is a lie. It's the most magic of all media, the most transcendent. It makes space where there is no space.
There's something Zen-like about the way I work - it's like raking gravel in a Zen Buddhist garden.
I discovered about 150 dots is the minimum number of dots to make a specific recognizable person. You can make something that looks like a head, with fewer dots, but you won't be able to give much information about who it is.
In life you can be dealt a winning hand of cards and you can find a way to lose, and you can be dealt a losing hand and find a way to win. True in art and true in life: you pretty much make your own destiny. If you are by nature an optimistic person, which I am, that puts you in a better position to be lucky in life.
I learned you could suffer a terrible tragedy and still be happy again.
If it looks like art, chances are it's somebody else's art.
Photography is the easiest medium with which to be merely competent. Almost anybody can be competent. It's the hardest medium in which to have some sort of personal vision and to have a signature style.
My mother was a piano teacher, my father an inventor. He invented the reflective paint they still use on airstrips. They had faith in my ambition, and I think that made all the difference.
I wanted to translate from one flat surface to another. In fact, my learning disabilities controlled a lot of things. I don't recognize faces, so I'm sure it's what drove me to portraits in the first place.
You don't have to have a great art idea - just get to work and something will happen. So that's pretty much my modus operandi and pretty much my principal position, such as it is.