To characterize them as copies I would have to see the original photos side by side with the paintings I guess. Are you using that term in a derogative sense?
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To characterize them as copies I would have to see the original photos side by side with the paintings I guess. Are you using that term in a derogative sense?
Oh, not at all. I like Close's work, although--as you know--you really have to see the real things, at least with the paintings--to really get it. They are quite large. And with the later paintings, with all the color patches, you have to be able to stand back a ways and then walk up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirk Gittings
But I think even Close would describe the paintings as something like a copy. Not sure what a better word might be. Maybe there isn't one.
--Darin
Yes, Chuck Close paintings must be seen in person and looked at from several viewing distances. They are impossible to appreciate on a computer, let alone a phablet.
But most won't bother.
I have never seen a 20x24 Polaroid, it's on the list.
A little serendipity. Flipping through a used book that came in the mail a week or so ago--and there is a page on Close with him talking about how he used photographs for his painting, how he came to do photographs as the finished art work, and a sample of one of his early photographic works that actually has the grid lines I mentioned penciled on it. Very cool.
--Darin
Attachment 110249Attachment 110248
The forum software made the grid lines very hard to see. Here is a closer shot:
--Darin
Attachment 110250
He is unique in his vision. So he considers his paintings to be reproduction photographs? How are his hand made paintings any different than a digital machine squirting ink in patterns, like inkjet photographic prints.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darin Boville
Anyone who ever has taken a standard art class in high school would know this technique it's a very traditional way to make a drawing from another piece of imagery, I did this in high school for sure but the gridlines and then reproducing it onto another medium.
My high school kid uses the technique all the time--it's been used forever. But it does go a long way toward answering whether Close's paintings are in some sense "copies"...Quote:
Originally Posted by StoneNYC
--Darin
Again... go back to how he has to compose things mentally. He cannot recognize faces, so he broke up each one into grids than worked from that. Eventually, in
some of his later paintings, these grids sections took meaning on their own, and the painting works as a composite of them, vaguely analogous to how a cubist might
break things up and reassemble them on a flat surface. To say he was simply reproducing a photograph on canvas might have been partially correct back in his
strictly "photorealist" days, but not really, because a painter can introduce many subtle changes that distinguish it as a painting rather than a photograph. But the
manner in which Close did this, and not really the scale, is what became so interesting. And it is that transition from one to another, particularly when he had taken
a little more liberty with it, that I find way more interesting than just huge photographs, printed by others.
Some of my generation were never allowed art or shop classes. I changed schools yearly and in every one I was only allowed math, science, language, history. I didn't take an art class until I went to art school in my 50's. MFA 2001.
Sputnik, 1957, changed my education to science and math. I entered college with 2 years tested AP college credit, but soon quit, when they tried to force me take 4 years anyway. Waste of time.
Assuming common experience is always a mistake, as is assuming Chuck Close is not operating on a higher level, despite known handicaps.
Quote:
Originally Posted by StoneNYC