For the past 30 years, American artist Chuck Close (b. 1940) has concentrated on essentially one subject: the human face. This volume, the most comprehensive assessment of Close's work yet published, includes portraits of Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Alex Katz, Lucas Samaras, and others. It accompanies a mid-career retrospective opening at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in February 1998. 178 illustrations, 113 in color.

This volume critically surveys the full range of Chuck Close's career, in which he has explored the rich possibilities implicit in his original breakthrough almost four decades ago.

Inside an art gallery, it is easy to forget that the paintings there are the end products of a process involving not only creative inspiration, but also plenty of physical and logistical details. It is these "cruder," more mundane aspects of a painter's daily routine that motivated Brooklyn artist Joe Fig to embark almost ten years ago on a highly unorthodox, multilayered exploration of the working life of the professional artist. Determined to ground his research in the physical world, Fig began constructing a series of diorama-like miniature reproductions of the studios of modern art's most legendary painters, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. A desire for firsthand references led Fig to approach contemporary artists for access to their studios. Armed with a camera and a self-made "Artist's Questionnaire," Fig began a journey through the workspaces of some of today's most exciting contemporary artists.

This essential volume on Chuck Close's innovative and groundbreaking techniques presents a life's work in printmaking by one of the most influential artists of our time. Since the retrospective exhibition of Chuck Close's prints first began touring in 2003, it has visited some 20 venues around the world, even as the artist has persisted in working prolifically and brilliantly in various print media. Revealing the full arc of Close's career in printmaking, including his most recent work and technical achievements, this book features everything from woodcuts, Woodbury types, and anamorphic etchings to felt hand-stamp prints, pulp-paper multiples, and watercolor pigment prints. With a thorough introduction, an essay by the distinguished scholar Richard Shiff, and interviews with the artist and master printmakers, this classic study will stand as the definitive reference on Close's print practice for years to come.

This is a revised and expanded edition of the popular title. The first bok to offer a comprehensive, critical examination of one of America's most celebrated living artists. Chuck Close reinvented portraiture almost four decades ago with a series of nine-foot-tall, black-and-white likenesses of himself and fellow artists, which astonished an art world dominated by minimalism and conceptualism. Close has since explored the possibilities implicit in his original breakthrough in an array of mediums. This lavish, large-format volume is the first to deal with all aspects of Close's career and to place them in a biographical context. Christopher Finch's insight into Close's achievement comes by way of hundreds of studio visits and thousands of hours of conversation since he met Close in 1968. Finch provides an engaging, in-depth analysis of Close's portraits on canvas, from the continuous-tone airbrushed heads of the 1960's and '70's to the painterly "prismatic grids" of the past two decades. The more than 300 illustrations featured in the book survey almost all of Close's paintings and include his most recent work, a selection of his prints and multiples and examples of his photographic oeuvre. This beautifully designed volume reveals not only the variety of pictorial strategies Close has devised, but the extraordinary personality of the artist behind the work. ILLUSTRATIONS 310 colour photos *

Chronicles the life and career of innovative contemporary artist Chuck Close, focusing on how he developed his pioneering ideas of scale, form, and color through the theme of portraiture.