Frank

I recently visited the Minneapolis Institute Of Arts, the most complete art museum in the state of Minnesota; featuring almost 100,000 works of art within its beautiful modern-Mediterranean architecture. In this museum I could find and admire ancient artwork (Egyptian, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, etc), dated thousands of years old and contemporary abstract pieces made by artists all over the world; passing throughout a magnificent collection of art from every period of human history. The museum has countless galleries; each one designed to fit perfectly within the period of artwork in exhibition, including the frames, however, there was one piece that made me look at art in a different way, its name is “Frank”.

Chuck Close

I was impressed with many masterpieces, making it difficult for me to choose one to write about, so, after analyzing many of my personal favorites, I decided to write about a contemporary piece that catch my eye instantly, this is called “Frank” painted by Chuck Close in 1969, acrylic on canvas (H.108 x W.84). I chose this masterpiece for two reasons; the first one is because the impressive size of the canvas and the more impressive photo realistic image; the second reason is the technique used by these artist and the connection of his work with one of my favorite techniques: Pointillism.

Chuck Close (1940-) is an American painter that began to paint during the decade of the 1960's, reaching a distinctive style at the end of this decade and the beginning of the 70's. Chuck Close graduated from the University of Washington and he has a degree from the University of Yale as well. After moving to New York, he was influenced by the photographic painter Claude Cahun, who was an inspiration for developing his own technique and creating pieces; all of them portraits; for the new photo realistic movement.

Close is a big personality of the so-called “Photo realistic” movement originated in the early 70's; others call this movement Hyper-realistic or Super-realistic because of the extreme perfection of these masterpieces. This movement was born as an aversion to minimalism and conceptual art, which didn't use imagery as an expression of art itself. The photo realists' aim to perfection and smooth surfaces greatly influenced Close's earlier artworks, which is very obvious in “Frank”; piece created from a black and white photograph of this individual. However, there are many other prestigious pieces that share common attributes with “Frank”, among these, are worth to mention “Big Self Portrait”, 1968 acrylic on canvas (107 ½ x 83 ½) and “Self Portrait, black on white”, 1977, etching.

Anatomy of “Frank”

“Frank” is a huge canvas located in the Modern-Contemporary section of the museum, Gallery 373. I could admire this piece at first glance from two galleries away through the linear open entrances of each gallery, taking into account the size of the piece and the strategic location of it, it's without a doubt one of the main attractions of the museum. I could swear from the distance that the portrait was an enlarged photograph; it was a big surprise to see that it actually was a painting; and my surprise was bigger when I came closer and closer and the illusion of being a photograph didn't vanished.

When I was finally inches away my admiration grew bigger because the perfection of the piece was compared to nothing I've ever seen before. The manipulation of lights and darks is in every aspect perfect; the smoothness and fine lines on the surface almost look like something made in a printer or air brushing technique; not to mention the perfect dimensions of the portrait, as well as the striking realistic expression of it.

I stood in front of “Frank” several minutes, analyzing every possible flaw but I was unable to find it, even the facial hair is so real, the shadows reflected by the glasses over the cheeks, the eye expression and the curly hair that frame the face; everything is so well detailed, mixing light into the darkness with perfect accuracy and mixing shadows into the light with what looks like natural smoothness. One of the characteristics of the painting is that it depicts the photographic image so accurate, that it even has the “regular” sharpness and blurriness in some areas of the portrait, just like in the pictures from the 60's and 70's. I could see some blurry areas over the hair and left eye, while the contrast made the right side of it more sharp, given the angle of light used in the actual photograph.

The Technique

The photo realistic technique used in this art work, consists of making a grid into an enlarged photograph and the canvas, then each square is considered a small canvas and a starting point taking as a fact that each square is not a part of the image but an image itself, which makes it easier for the artist to visualize each part as whole that has to be copied as perfect as possible and not letting the relationships between each square to take over and dominate the artist's eye for detail. This technique has a relative closeness to the pointillist technique used by Seurat because each square represents a dot or a point that builds the image, however photo realism might not be as analytical as pointillism, it surely has the same goal of blending color to create volume, texture and form.

Tragic Art

It is worth to mention that this gifted artist suffered a spinal blood clot in 1988, causing quadriplegia; this incident led him to develop a new technique even more similar to the pointillist technique. Using his mouth as his hands; his process is a combination of pointillism and production printing imagery that integrated quite well with the photo realistic grid method, creating a new period into the life and art of Chuck Close. Examples of this new period are “April” 1990-91, oil on canvas (100x 84); “Kiki” (shown below) 1993, acrylic on canvas (107 ½ x 83 ½) and “Self Portrait” 2002, pulp, pochoir; among other equally impressive portraits. This new period and style of painting goes far from the photo realistic movement he was part of in the beginning, instead this new personal style is more unique, original and creative, aiming for a more free style painting that adapted well to his different lifestyle and changing abilities.