by Jerome du Bois
In a face as Close reveals it, everything is featured: the appearance, the mark, the work, and an entire set of cultural values. Richard Shiff [my emphasis]
He shows you his trick pockets and it's still magic in the end.
--Anthony Grafton, Chair, Council of Humanities, Princeton, October 2003
I like tooth -- Chuck Close, October 2002
A superb retrospective of the inimitable printwork of a major contemporary artist, Chuck Close, began late September at the Blaffer Gallery in Houston and will make several rounds from there, including Miami and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, but excluding Phoenix. I must content myself with the catalogue, which is itself superb. Here follows a 2,000-word review, with lots of quotes, links, and beautiful image links.
The Appearance
First, the bare bones: Princeton University Press, 160 heavy, glossy, 9 x 12 pages, softbound (hardcover is available). 110 color plates, 38 b/w illustrations, and a double gatefold (which is fantastic; more about it below). One-fourth of the text is an introduction by Terrie Sultan, Director of the Blaffer Gallery and the talent behind the exhibition; and an essay by professor and writer Richard Shiff from the University of Texas at Austin. The other three-fourths consists of interviews with Close and the relevant printers on the "process and collaboration" involved in eight printmaking techniques: mezzotint, pulp-paper multiples, spitbite etching, reduction linoleum, silk screen, Japanese-style woodcut, European-style woodcut, and scribble etching. (These interviews show how Close's boundary-pushing -- in size, materials, tools, for example -- has redefined whole areas of printmaking; he's even invented several techniques. "An artist looking for trouble," he pursues, lassos and swallows the moon, over and over again.) These conversations are followed by a chronology and then a helpful glossary and index.
Patricia Fabricant designed the book to reflect the exhibition, which has 118 pieces, including proof prints, blocks, even molds -- the "process" part of the title. (As Ms. Sultan writes in the acknowledgements, "What developed over the course of our conversations was an emphasis on the nature of Close's studio process, and this led to the idea for a project that would explore, in depth, one specific aspect of his work.") Fully forty-five pages of photos, many double- or multi-page layouts, depict the stages and devices involved or show facing-page comparisons -- and she smartly joined photos and their referential texts, so you're not flipping back and forth all the time.
The layout is both charming and sensitive. Just after Ms. Sultan's introduction comes the gatefold, which consists of eight full-bleed close-ups of Close's face, in eight different media, each one reduced and cropped at the exact same coordinates as its mates; so one may compare how the artist has solved the same problem eight different ways. Then, right after the last close-up -- a brushy jigsaw of color -- you flip the page and there's a small b/w photo of an eight-year-old kid -- Chuck Close dressed as a magician, c. 1946, it says here -- looking for all the world like Mr. Peanut with long pants, walking stick, top hat, and droll black ribbon dangling nonchalantly from his pince-nez.
More poignant and uncanny is the daguerrotype, two pages later, of the late Kirk Varnedoe -- "at near-licking distance from the lens," as he described it. Varnedoe, a legendary MOMA curator, lecturer, and writer who reshaped major areas of the New York art world, and a longtime champion of Close, died August 14, 2003 -- about a month before this exhibition and this book appeared.
The Mark
Chuck Close has developed a strategy for mapping the world in a system of visual metaphors. His paintings, photographs, and prints mark an intersection between representation and abstraction that is simultaneously of the moment and timeless. Close makes his paintings through a rigorous process of creating and editing a series of abstract marks that coalesce into a coherent representational image. -- Terrie Sultan, page 9.
It's that coalescing part that is always the dynamic problem, as the eye, delighted%
Posted by Jerome at November 9, 2003 03:15 PM