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Close, Chuck
(American, b. 1940)
Nancy
1968
Acrylic on canvas
108 3/8 x 82 1/4 in.
Gift of Herbert H. Kohl Charities, Inc.
© Chuck Close, courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York
M1983.207

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Chuck Close mapped out a singular style by drawing upon elements of Pop Art, Minimalism, and Photo-Realism.

Taking the photographic portrait as his subject, presenting it on a colossal scale and then putting it through a complex process of deconstruction and analytic reconstruction, Close created a new kind of art. Antecedents for his approach can be found in advertising billboards and much further back in Renaissance techniques of squaring up drawings for transfer to large-scale fresco paintings.

A work such as Nancy, an intense rendering of Close’s friend the artist Nancy Graves, is a confrontational presence. Part actual portrait, part visionary idea of a portrait, the canvas is a translation of the original photograph into a painterly surface of individual marks that coalesce to form areas of focus and fuzziness.

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