Chuck Close And Photorealism Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Chuck Close And Photorealism - Research Paper Example A graduate of the Yale University School of Art and once a teacher of arts in University of Massachusetts, Chuck Close became a significant figure in artistic society of the latter half of the twentieth century known for his remarkable style of painting large-scale portraits. â€Å"Close learned to paint like an Abstract Expressionist when he was a student at Yale† . Yet, while the painter’s preferences in his tuition years centered mainly on abstract impressionism, training in Europe and the MFA program have added a pinch of more modern trends including minimalism and pop art. However, the artists managed to choose the domain for his work rather early: human faces and their versatile portrayals in photography and paint became the major course for the artist’s development, while the painterly style and instruments changed for several times. During his teaching career in Amherst, the painter experimented with pop-inspired elements in portraiture, engaging photogra phic images for the first time in his work: those were the daring and large realistic pictures of nude models including Bid Nude of 1967. However, it was his Big Self-Portrait that served as an important milestone in development of his style, for this painting literally opened the series of the famous photorealistic ‘heads’ on a larger-than-life scale and with exaggerated and unflattering manner of depiction, his friends and family as models, first in grayscale and then in color. Later period of Close’ work was marked by domination of pointillism.