Consequently, no problem becomes too big to be solved. He uses a grid to break down every image that he paints into small incremental units so that he can comfortably focus on each part to avoid being overwhelmed by the whole. His learning difficulties also provide a key to his working methods.
He feels he was compelled to make portraits by his need to commit faces to memory. To reinforce this relationship he titles all his portraits with the subject's first name only and he also refused commissions on the grounds that "Anyone vain enough to want a nine-foot portrait of themselves would want the blemishes removed."Ĭhuck Close has grown to believe that his work is driven by his lifelong learning difficulties such as dyslexia and prosopagnosia (the inability to remember faces). He chose this select group for their anonymity as any recognition of celebrity in his subject matter, such as exists in a Warhol portrait, would distract the spectator from the aesthetics of the work. The subjects of his portraits are drawn from himself, his family and friends (most of whom are fellow artists).
He began to work on large scale monochrome portraits in a Photorealist style, although the term had not yet been invented. In a dramatic switch from abstract to figurative painting, he abandoned the freedom of Abstract Expressionism in favour of more restrictive controls on both his subject matter and painting technique. Like many young artists he explored the established visual language of the day which he absorbed into his work but eventually rejected in his search for a personal style. As an emerging artist in the 1960's Chuck Close had grown up against the backdrop of Abstract Expressionism, the first major art movement to come out of America. The history of Western art has evolved by artists either developing the art of previous generations or reacting against it.