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Close & company: a traveling survey of Chuck Close's prints and the devices used to make them offers insights into the collaborative processes of contemporary U.S. workshops - Prints
Art in America, March, 2004 by Faye Hirsch
When Close first began to paint his friends and family, they were relatively unknown. Now most of the faces are familiar, and newer art-world celebrities are appearing in his works all the time. Close's portraits represent a network of relationships and alliances, evidence of a discursive dimension in the turn-of-the-century New York art world. Eloquent and gregarious, Close speaks readily and easily about his work, and about art, with others. Even more pronounced is this sociable tendency in the prints, where not only the subjects but the production itself evinces a milieu. For a little while, at least, the unsung heroes of a neglected niche in the art world will have their day. Confident in his own abilities and at the peak of his form, Close generously shines a light on them in this exhibition, and in doing so reveals much that is essential to print collaboration in the United States today.
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(1.) Terrie Sultan, Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration, Princeton, Princeton University Press, and Houston, Blaffer Gallery, Art Museum of the University of Houston, 2003, p. 119. The interviews/chapters are organized according to medium: Mezzotint (with Kathan Brown of Crown Point Press), Pulp-Paper Multiples (with Ruth Lingen and Mac Shore of Pace Editions and Paul Wong of Dieu Donne Papermill), Spitbite Etching (with Bill Hall and Julia d'Amario of Pace), Reduction Linoleum (with Lingen of Pace, and Robert Blanton and Thomas Little of Brand X Editions), Silk Screen (with Blanton and Little), Japanese-Style Woodcut (with Shibata), European-Style Woodcut (with Karl Hecksher, and Scribble Etching (with Hall and d'Amario af Pace).
(2.) Close made a fingerprint drawing of his own infant, Maggie, in 1984, somewhat more subdued and thoughtful-looking than Emma/Woodcut. His daughter Georgia smiles in her portraits.
(3.) The exhibition is not all-inclusive. Close has made more than 60 editions since 1972. Thirty-Three were included in a 2002 exhibition, "Chuck Close Prints," curated by Dede Young at the Neuberger Museum at SUNY Purchase. The last comprehensive retrospective was in 1989, at the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio: "Chuck Close Editions: A Catalogue Raisonne and Exhibition." There was a decision at the Blaffer show not to include any prints that were made using primarily photographic processes, even if they were editioned: this excluded, for example, the photogravure Lorna, completed at Graphicstudio/USF in 2002--perhaps the largest photogravure ever made--as well as Close's inkjet prints.
(4.) Though burnished from dark to light, as in mezzotint, this print is not a true mezzotint. See my discussion of Keith/Mezzotint, below.
(5.) In this, he follows the precedent set by Jasper Johns. As Sultan writes, p. 10, "Close credits Jasper Johns as one of the primary inspirations of the printmaking renaissance that began in the 1960s: 'Jasper elevated the print from ugly stepsister status to princess of the ball. It was clear in his prints that he was serious about creating a physicality and quality of visual experience that was different from, but equal to, his paintings.'" Like Johns, too, Close makes expensive prints. Notoriously slow at producing paintings, he has said that he likes the idea that his prints are more readily available. This does not mean, however, that just anyone can buy one. Emma/Woodcut, for example, at the time of the writing of this article, was listed on the Pace Prints Web site at $20,000.
