That's one of the reasons I love Chuck Close's paintings.
Chuck Close is an American photorealism painter who mainly paints ginormous portraits, mostly of family, friends, and collegues.
Here is a self-portrait from 1968.
I first learned of Chuck Close watching a documentary about him one Saturday afternoon several years ago. I had never heard of him before. The documentary (I think it was a South Bank Show) described how in 1988, he suffered a spinal artery collapse that left him paralyzed from the neck down. After much physical therapy, he regained modest use of his body. He discovered that he could still paint by taping a paintbrush to his wrist and by applying thick blotches of paint to the canvass essentially creating "pixels."
The documentary was interesting but then I kind of forgot about it until a couple of years later during a visit to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. I remember wandering upstairs away from my friends to one of the big modern art rooms. At the room's entrance, directly across from me, was an enormous almost floor-to-ceiling Chuck Close self-portrait. This isn't the exact one I saw, but similar.
I then walked up closer and saw the pixels.
Then, I'll never forget....I looked down at my Chuck Close leaflet and saw one of his watercolors from before his artery collapse and I could tell it was the same artist. I mean, obviously, I KNEW it was, but the thing is was that I could TELL...His essence could not be repressed.
Even though he could not paint at all in the same way that he used to be able to, both paintings had that Barry White distinctiveness.
I tell you it gave me chills, and I felt this beautiful glow. It was one of those moments I'll always remember.
A great book about Chuck is Martin Friedman's "A Close Reading."
Marion Cajori's documentary "Chuck Close: A Portrait in Progress" is fantastic too.
