Exhibition Review #4: Chuck Close

First, a confession: the exhibition about to be chronicled is not in Los Angeles, and therefore technically does not fit within the scope of this blog. However, while at home in San Jose, CA for Thanksgiving, I had the opportunity to view “Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration,” an exhibition of Chuck Close prints currently showing at the San Jose Museum of Modern Art. Featuring more 125 works by the artist, the exhibition includes not only the finished works but also preliminary proofs, etching plates, and editions at various stages of development> the result is a comprehensive look at the artistic process of one of the most prominent contemporary American artists.

Close’s personal background reveals much about the development of his unique style. As an MFA student at Yale from 1962-1964, Close struggled to find his own style within the dramatically-shifting American art world of the late-1960’s. As he recalls in a recent interview,

“If you think about the late 1960s, painting was dead, sculpture ruled. 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 Then the dumbest, most moribund, out-of-date, and shopworn of all possible things you could do was make a portrait. I remember Clement Greenberg said to [Willem] de Kooning that the only thing you can’t do in art anymore is make a portrait.”

Ironically, rather than taking Greenberg’s words as a warning, Close took them as a challenge. Seeking to “mitigate against the standard hierarchy of the portrait,” he turned to “the mug shot as a way around commissioned portraiture.” Thus, his signature photorealist style was born.

Over the last 40 years, Close has continued to produce “mug-shot” portraits, often photorealist in style. That said, it is difficult to label and/or summarize the works featured in “Process and Collaboration.” Close constantly experiments with new artistic styles and mediums; this exhibition alone features collages, aquatints, lithographs, silk-screens, tapestries and wood block prints. One of the exhibitions most striking works is Leslie/Fingerprints (top left), a direct gauvre from 1986. Close created the image by dipping his fingers in ink and pressing them onto a sheet of Mylar, varying the pressure of his touch in order to create a range of gray shades. The end result is extraordinary. Up close, the work appears merely a mass collection of fingerprints; upon stepping back, however, the image suddenly snaps into place.

Close exhibits similar creativity in Self-Portrait/Pulp (2001) [top right]. A large “mug shot” of the artist, it is composed of paper pulp in 11 shades of gray. To create the piece, Close created a plastic mold of his face with an elaborate grid; established a gray scale, giving each tone a number; carefully numbered the grid; and then filled in the grid with paper pulp dyed the appropriate tone. The end result is equal parts photograph, tapestry, and Impressionistic.

My favorite work in the exhibition was Lyle (2002) [bottom left], a silkscreen composed of an astounding 149 colors. The work demonstrates Close’s mastery of the illusions and mechanics of visual perception. Composed of the Kandinsky-esque cocentric circles arranged in a gigantic grid, the work simultaneously abstract and a photorealistic. My eye continued to jump between viewing Lyle as a series of circles and as portrait – this is a silkscreen that messes with your mind (in a good way)!

Beyond the standout pieces featured in “Process and Collaboration,” however, what I find intriguing about Close’s work is how it manages to straddle so many of the artistic debates that polarized the art world during the 1970s and 1980s. One could argue that Close exemplifies “postmodern” art; equal parts painter and photographer, his works draw upon both traditions while adhering to neither. At a time when the art world was up in arms over the future of painting, Close’s work returns to traditional figurative forms but in a whole new way. Moreover, Close in an exemplary postmodernist in that his art clearly consistently engages with the signifier. He does not paint the human face as much as he investigates the principles of perception; as described in the exhibition catalogue, his works strive to make the viewer become aware of the manner in which we see.

Walking out the gallery and back to my car, I happened to pass by “Downtown Doors,” and ongoing project where high-school artists are selected to paint utility doors in downtown San Jose. Stopping to admire the works, I noticed that one painting (see below) was clearly done in the style of Chuck Close. While Greenberg declared portraiture dead, it looks like Close got the last laugh.

Sources:

Siri, Engberg and Madeleine Grynsztejn. "Navigating the Self
Chuck Close discusses portraiture and the topography of the face." Walker Art Center, 2005. http://visualarts.walkerart.org/detail.wac?id=2036&title=Articles