His paintings from the ’70s were often black-and-white and made by overlaying a grid on a photograph. In Close’s most famous works, featuring figures like the composer Philip Glass and the artist Alex Katz, gigantic likenesses are rendered with an almost unparalleled precision. “I want to deal with the image it has recorded which is black and white, two-dimensional, and loaded with surface detail.” But he was quick to point out that he was “not trying to make facsimiles of photographs.” It just gets it all down,” he told Artforum in 1970. “The camera is not aware of what it is looking at. National Gallery Cancels Chuck Close Show Following Allegations of Sexual Misconductįor Close, photography initially offered him the ability to remove his own subjectivity from the painterly process.

Close initially eschewed a connection to the movement, however, and even declined an invitation to participate in “Realism Now,” art historian Linda Nochlin’s 1968 exhibition at Vassar College’s museum in Poughkeepsie, New York. They are considered key examples of Photorealism, a style associated with the late 1960s and early ’70s that involves the incorporation of photography into the painting process to create a more precise image. “His contributions are inextricable from the achievements of 20th- and 21st-century art.”Ĭlose’s large-scale painting of his artist colleagues, celebrities, politicians, and others in his orbit have been widely exhibited. “I am saddened by the loss of one of my dearest friends and greatest artists of our time,” said Pace chairman Arne Glimcher. Pace Gallery, which represents him, said on Thursday that he had died after a congestive heart failure resulting from a long illness. Chuck Close, a Photorealist painter who earned acclaim for his incisive portraits and more recently faced criticism after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment, has died at 81.

Chuck close portraits