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July 21, 2005
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| Chuck Close says he is amazed he has done so many self portraits. He say's if nothing else they document his hair loss, and changing sensibilities in eyewear. (MPR Photo/Stephanie Curtis) |
Minneapolis, Minn. — The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis bought Close's first one, called "Big Self Portrait," back in the late '60s. It's been a crowd-pleaser ever since.
It looks like a huge black and white photograph of a disheveled, unshaven young man. He wears thick-framed glasses, and the smoke from his cigarette is making him grimace slightly. Or maybe he's sneering. It was Chuck Close's first serious attempt at painting himself.
Now "Big Self Portrait" is going back up on the walls in the Walker, along with dozens of other Chuck Close self-portraits. Almost all focus just on his face. Close glides on a motorized wheelchair through the galleries, discussing picture placement with curator Siri Engberg.
Some of the pictures are huge, taller than the members of the work crew carefully maneuvering them into position. Others are just inches across.
"I am surprised I have done so many," says Close. "I was really shocked to realize how many I have done. I must be more narcissistic and self-involved than I always thought I was."
These are not just paintings. There is Chuck Close in pastels, and Chuck Close in colored pencils. He stares out from Polaroids, paper pulp montages, daguerrotypes, and even plain old inkjet printer images.
Close admits the first self-portrait was a bit of a fluke. He had some shots left on a roll of film, so he stared into the lens and snapped off the rest. He liked what he saw and decided to make a larger painting.
He wanted to make the head so big that it was what he calls a "Gulliver's Travels experience."
"I want to get it so big that it is hard for the viewer to experience it as a whole, force the viewer to scan it, experience it almost like it was a landscape they were traversing, and trip over a beard hair, and fall into a nostril or something," Close says.
He says he enjoys watching people as they try to get the right viewing distance for one of his pictures. First they tend to go as far back as they need to try to take in the whole image.
"Then there is a kind of middle distance where they scan it. And then I want to suck them right up to the paintings, so they can see the artificiality as well as the reality," says Close. "The distribution of marks on a flat surface. And it's the tension between that flat reading of the distribution of marks on a flat surface and what it warps into, when it warps into a head, that really interests me."
Over the years Chuck Close has used many different media. In a way he's had to relearn the art of portraiture each time. He says he believes the most important thing is to keep himself in trouble and off-balance.
"I like to back myself into a corner where no one else's solutions will fit, and then I'll have to come up with my own personal idiosyncratic solutions," Close says.
"I think in general, problem-solving is greatly over-valued in our society. Problem creation is more interesting," he says. "If you can ask yourself an interesting enough question, and a unique question, then your answer is going to be unique, and you are going to push yourself somewhere you haven't been before, because the old answers won't fit the new question."
Chuck Close has had to look for a lot of answers over his life. In 1988 he collapsed, paralysed by a spinal blood clot. He almost died, and even after he was out of danger he had lost the use of his arms and legs. But as soon as he could he returned to painting, with brushes strapped to his hands.
"I can't imagine ever wanting to stop work," he says. "I've made enough money, I don't need any more. But I'll tell you one thing about being in a wheelchair, the days I don't work go by at a glacial speed. It's like they're never going to get over. And the days that I paint fly by, so I am never going to give that up."
Chuck Close won't be painting much this weekend. Some 1,200 people have already bought tickets for the opening party at the Walker, and his artist's talk Sunday has been sold out for months.
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