Chuck Close was born on July 5, 1940 in Monroe Wisconsin. Chuck close is considered to be an American photo realist or super realist who specializes in close up portraits and self portraits. In this style, artists in the early 1970s created a link between representational systems of painting and photography. Photo realists often used a grid technique to enlarge a photograph and reduce each square to formal elements of design. Each grid is it's own little piece of artwork and many photo realists use the airbrush technique. Chuck Close has been a leading figure in contemporary art since the 1970's. In 1962-1964 Chuck Close attended Yale University for graduate school where he was an assistant to master printer Gabor Peterdi, this is when he received his MFA. In 1995 Close received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Art from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In 1996 Close also received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Art from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Finally in 1997 Chuck received an Honorary Doctorate from the Rhode Island school of design, Province. Close is best known for the monumental heads that he paints using thousands of tiny brush bursts, thumbprints, or by looping multi colored brushstrokes. Chuck Close has developed a formal analysis and methodical reconfiguration of the human face that have dramatically changed the definition of human portraiture. Over the years Chuck's work has gone from harsh black and white images to colorful and brightly patterned canvases of an almost abstract painterliness. The Big Self-Portrait in black in white was the first of Close's mural-sized work painted from photographs. This painting took four months to complete and was on a large canvas which was 107 1/2x 83 1/2 inches. He used acrylic paint and an airbrush to include every detail. For this painting Close took many picture of himself of his face and neck from different directions. Then he selected one of the images and made two copies of it 11x14 inches, on one copy he drew a grid and lettered and numbered it. Then he used both copies to transfer the photographic image square by square onto a large canvas. When making his painting Close was interested in the visual elements-shapes, textures, volume, shadows, and highlights, of the photograph itself. Close was also interested in how a photograph shows some things in focus and sharp and also some things are out of focus or blurry. In his photograph the tip of his cigarette and the hair on the back of his neck are out of focus so he also made them out of focus in is Big Self-Portrait. Like most artists Close changed his style of work but his was not by choice. In 1988 Close experienced a tragedy, he had a spinal blood clot, which left him a quadriplegic so he is unable to move his arms or his legs. This did not deter him from painting, it just caused him to adapt a new painting style in which he painted using his teeth to hold the paintbrush. He had assistants tape off the grid, he then used the techniques of grisaille and pointillism within the grids. The result was still a canvas of mini paintings, which viewed from a distance are seen as a single or unified image.
The sitters for Chuck Close's work are posed in a manner that allows only the subtlest of individual inflections. At first glance the Polaroids that Chuck works from resemble drivers licenses or passport photos, but in truth they are not because they are imposing in a way that ID photos can never be.
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