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for Judy
Judy
Artist
Chuck Close
(Born 1940, United States; died 2021, United States)
Date1989-90
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 72 x 60 x 2 in. (182.88 x 152.4 x 5.08 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Gift of Anne Burnett Tandy in Memory of Ollie Lake Burnett, by Exchange
Object number1990.8
Status
Not on viewSignedverso in black on canvas, " 'judy' 1989-90/© 1990/c. close"
Copyright© Chuck Close
Category
Label TextChuck Close has created portraits in a variety of media, including paintings, photographs, collages, and prints, since the 1960s. The faces in his works are those of his friends and family—and periodically his own—but the subject is incidental to the style in which the portraits are made. In the Modern’s work, Judy, 1989–90, Close depicted the sculptor Judy Pfaff in a manner that is dry yet psychologically intense, transforming a close-cropped, frontal view of her face bearing a deadpan expression into a large, colorful painting.
Close has always painted his portraits from photographs rather than live sitters. Judy, made from a Polaroid print, is one of the first major paintings he completed after switching from black-and-white photographs to color. The painting’s bright palette and expressionistic brushwork are hallmarks of the artist’s mid-career style. Close dramatically enlarged the size of the photograph, superimposed a grid on the image, then painted each pixel of the grid onto the canvas with an abstract shape to create a repetitive pattern. Dots, squares, ovals, and lozenges made primarily with pink, orange, yellow, and blue pigments create an overall mosaic effect. The result blurs the boundary between realism and abstraction.
The shallow space and flat color of Close’s canvas are akin to the work of the second-generation Abstract Expressionists, and his grid system is reminiscent of the Minimalists. At the same time, Close subverts the tenets of abstraction by embracing the representation of human subjects. In this, his work has certain affinities to the American Pop artists of the 1960s and the Photorealists of the 1970s. Mirroring Pop artists’ use of everyday objects and nontraditional, impersonal artistic techniques, Close worked from photographs of ordinary people, but his images do not engage with consumer and popular culture. And although he echoes the dispassionate sensibility of the Photorealists, who also used photographic source material, his paintings are singular in their focus on the human face.
Close has always painted his portraits from photographs rather than live sitters. Judy, made from a Polaroid print, is one of the first major paintings he completed after switching from black-and-white photographs to color. The painting’s bright palette and expressionistic brushwork are hallmarks of the artist’s mid-career style. Close dramatically enlarged the size of the photograph, superimposed a grid on the image, then painted each pixel of the grid onto the canvas with an abstract shape to create a repetitive pattern. Dots, squares, ovals, and lozenges made primarily with pink, orange, yellow, and blue pigments create an overall mosaic effect. The result blurs the boundary between realism and abstraction.
The shallow space and flat color of Close’s canvas are akin to the work of the second-generation Abstract Expressionists, and his grid system is reminiscent of the Minimalists. At the same time, Close subverts the tenets of abstraction by embracing the representation of human subjects. In this, his work has certain affinities to the American Pop artists of the 1960s and the Photorealists of the 1970s. Mirroring Pop artists’ use of everyday objects and nontraditional, impersonal artistic techniques, Close worked from photographs of ordinary people, but his images do not engage with consumer and popular culture. And although he echoes the dispassionate sensibility of the Photorealists, who also used photographic source material, his paintings are singular in their focus on the human face.