Chuck Close Work Author:Christopher Finch Now available in a revised and expanded — edition, this book offers the first comprehensive — critical examination of one of America's most — celebrated living artists. Chuck Close reinvented portraiture almost four decades ago — with a series of nine-foot-tall, black-and-white likenesses of — himself and fellow artists, which astonished an art world... more »
dominated by minimalism and conceptualism. Close has since
explored the possibilities implicit in his original breakthrough
in an array of mediums. This lavish, large-format volume is the
first to deal with all aspects of Close's career and to place
them in a biographical context.
Christopher Finch's insight into Close's achievement comes by
way of hundreds of studio visits and thousands of hours of
conversation since he met Close in 1968. Finch provides an
engaging, in-depth analysis of Close's portraits on canvas,
from the continuous-tone airbrushed heads of the 1960s and
`70s to the painterly "prismatic grids" of the past two
decades. The more than 300 illustrations featured in the book
survey almost all of Close's paintings, including his most recent
work, together with a selection of his prints and multiples, and
examples of his photographic oeuvre. This beautifully
designed volume reveals not only the variety of pictorial
strategies Close has devised, but the extraordinary personality