Corcoran College of Art and Design
Image by Denny Henry
Shadows of History
Upcoming Exhibition
Shadows of History: Photographs of the Civil War
February 4–May 6, 2012
San Miguel
Travel with the Corcoran
Discover the world's treasures on art-themed trips to Havana and Trinidad, Cuba, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration
July 3, 2010 – September 12, 2010

ABOUT THE ARTIST


Eli Obus, Time Lapse Video of Chuck Close Roy Paper/Pulp at Pace Paper, 2010, Video, running time: 7 minutes, 45 seconds, Pace Prints, Inc., New York, © 2010 Eli Obus / Pace Prints, Inc., New York

Born in 1940 in Monroe, Washington, Close received his MFA in printmaking and painting from Yale University in 1964. By 1967, he had abandoned abstract painting and started to produce intricate, labor-intensive drawings and paintings picturing himself and his friends. Always interested in the process required to build and generate his monumental portraits, Close has intentionally worked in various media, including painting and photography. He has consistently turned to printmaking to experiment with visual ideas, resulting in some of his most captivating and accomplished works. 

In 1972, with the help of printer Kathan Brown of Crown Point Press, Close created his first print as an established artist by revisiting the 17th-century technique of mezzotint,no longer in vogue. He has since expanded his technical repertoire as a printmaker, engaging with processes as diverse as woodcut, silk screen, aquatint, and spitbite etching. This exhibition includes seminal works that range from Close’s first print, Keith/Mezzotint, 1972, to the ambitious 113-color Japanese-style ukiyo-e woodcut Emma, produced 30 years later. Also on display are select matrices and proofs that illustrate the steps involved in making a print, as well as examples of Close’s work in other media.

Attracted to the limitations and difficulties of printmaking, Close has routinely collaborated with a community of master printers to produce his elaborate works. He has engineered new techniques and approaches that have greatly expanded the possibilities of the medium. Though he continues to refine and develop his methods of working, he consistently starts from photographs that feature only the heads of his subjects, and he employs a grid system to transcribe those portraits into finished prints. Sometimes Close returns to a subject years later, re-using and repurposing an image to inspire new works. 

When making a print, Close and his collaborators complete every stage of their process —from translating an image onto a matrix, to carving wood blocks, etching plates, and applying multiple layers of color—by hand. The mammoth scale and technical complexity of many of his portraits, combined with this time-consuming process, often means that a single print may take years to complete. Close welcomes this challenge, stating that, “when you have very strict limitations, you have to be…very creative to figure out a way of getting them to work for you. I found that kind of problem-solving very interesting.”


Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration was organized by Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston. The exhibition and publication have been generously underwritten by the Neuberger Berman Foundation. Additional support was made possible by the Lannan Foundation, Jon and Mary Shirley, The Eleanor and Frank Freed Foundation and Houston Endowment Inc., Jonathan and Marita Fairbanks, Dorene and Frank Herzog, Andrew and Gretchen McFarland, Carey Shuart, The Wortham Foundation, Inc., Karen and Eric Pulaski, Suzanne Slesin and Michael Steinberg, and Texas Commission on the Arts.

Support for the presentation at the Corcoran Gallery of Art is made possible in part by the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.