The Famous Portrait Artists - Chuck Close

American photorealist painter and photographer Charles (Chuck) Thomas Close is a brilliant portraitist, employing grid patterns and other techniques of execution to produce time consuming and laborious portraits on canvas that are amazingly realistic, almost indistinguishable from the actual photographs.

Born on July 5, 1940 in Monroe, Washington, Close received his B.A. in 1962 from the University of Washington, Seattle, and M.F.A. from the Yale University in 1964. His childhood offered a few sad memories including the death of his father when Close was only 11. Art was a necessary distraction from the misfortune, and his skills were evident since his childhood.

But the most significant event in Chuck's life that served to be a turning point in his artistic career was his sudden paralysis in the December of 1988. Close was diagnosed with a spinal artery collapse and has been restricted to an electric wheelchair since. He did not let this tragedy ruin his career and returned to the art scene with his realistic portraits on canvas, though he had modified his style. It perhaps served to reinforce his reputation in the art world.

Close's underlying technique has been the same and one that has been employed by other exponents of photorealism, also called super-realism or hyper-realism. Developed as a reaction against conceptual art and minimalism, portraitists of the movement forged a link between canvas art and photography in the 1970s.

Close generally paints on a grid of squares marked on his canvases that form the basis for an image's representation. He also applies the grid to the photo from which he's reproducing, and then copies cell by cell from the photo. The grid is "never intended to be disguised", and is seen on close observation of his works. Each cell or square of the grid of the canvas is filled with colour regions which generally consist of painted rings on a contrasting background.

Close's early body of portraiture included black-and-white renditions and that along with the grid system made them striking. 'The Big Self Portrait' is perhaps the most glowing example of not only his early technique, but also his entire contribution to the photorealist movement till date.

Following the disability caused by the spinal blood clot of 1988, Close developed a new method in his portraits. He used the techniques of grisaille (grey tints) and pointillism (small colour dots that fuse when seen from a distance) to paint inside the grids. As a result each grid looks like a painting by itself, and the canvas when viewed closely in part looks completely different (resembling a number of miniature paintings) from that when viewed from the distance which gives the desired overall effect. 'Kiki' (1993) is the most representative example of this technique.