Chuck Close to eighty most: The opposite side of the glittering world

In his faces, you can run into a Far larger, up to three times two Meter metering, are the portraits of artist Chuck Close. To "Leslie" from 1985, you think you can use the eyeshadow as well as lip gloss material with hands grasping. In the case of "Fanny" that sucked, the grandmother of his wife from the same year as Leonardo rubbed with the fingers in a number of shades of gray in the screen, the view inevitably into a black hole below your throat. The period of the Seventies and Eighties due to, these were Billboard-sized facial landscapes to eye-Hike held in a photo-realistic style.

Stefan Trinks

editor in the features section.

Even more captivating was it, as Close began to faceting his "Faces" in hundreds of small diamonds like the eyes of Insects. Each of these crystalline Branches had, in turn, a marbling color game, the to the polished agate slices in the glass Windows of Sigmar Polke for Zurich's grossmünster is reminiscent of dazzling, permanent in shimmering motion, and thus indeterminable. You can't get rid of the feeling, to fall through this on the faces of the tensioned holey nets of transparent colors in ever new dimensions. Little wonder, therefore, that Close inaugurate this new technology, a self-portrait.

criticism

How strong these monumental portraits are determined by the used photographic templates, shows the likeness of the recently deceased German-American tiger-mage, "Roy II" in black and white: Today in the possession of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt shows can be found on the hard-contrast photo with large pores, leathery skin, and a very uncertain eye-sight. No more self-confident Impresario from Hollywood to keep Close to the mask, but it is possible, the painter, a micro-moment capture, which captures the opposite side of the glittering world. And there are insights into a world that reveal themselves in Closes also large format Self-portraits, the questioning and zagende looks to the actual topic of this face image to be walks.

For the past five years, the artist is now the subject of criticism, and this dichotomy between reverence and disdain for Close in year 2016, two press images that went around the world: While two women since 1988 in a wheelchair seated a painter accused, you spoke at a photo session "sexually harassed" that were on at the same time, other women in Philadelphia with a large poster portrait of Hillary Clinton by Close to the National Convention of the Democrats, to call for more solidarity and humanity.