Closer to Close
When I saw the Fisher Collection at the SFMOMA earlier this month, I fell in love with someone I never gave much thought to before. We were walking through the galleries when I spotted a Chuck Close painting. It was a massive canvas, about eight feet tall. I remarked to myself out loud, “I’ve always been ambivalent about Chuck Close.” I’d seen his work, understood what he was doing, but I never completely bought into it as something that moved me in anyway.
Bean said, “I love his art, Mom.” She grabbed my hand, walked me over to the canvas, and started explaining how Chuck Close paints with grids. I then remembered how much fun Bean and I have had at the Tucson Museum of Art looking at the Chuck Close piece they have there. She loves getting up really close to his work at watching it disintegrate into an abstract grid, then slowly stepping back until the subject comes into focus. Hell, I had fun doing that too.
But the painting that we were standing in front of at the SFMOMA was different. For one thing, it was much more recent and the scale was so enormous. For another, the paint was so much more vibrant and thicker than the earlier work. I took one look at it and said, “You’re right. I do love it. I need to reconsider my ambivalent relationship to Chuck Close.”
Then I stepped into the next gallery, and that’s when I feel in love. I saw these two enormous pieces hanging on the opposite wall. From a distance, they looked simply like large photographs, but as I got closer, I noticed that there was a subtle texture to them, a kind of “earthy” warm depth to them coupled with the kind of technological scientific observation of a photo reproduction. I discovered that they are tapestries. They are giant woven portraits, over eight feet tall, massive in scale, beauty and richness in texture and material, but they also contain a kind of clinical observational quality, much like detailed renderings of scientific subjects. The meshing of media, the scale, and merging of the natural warmth of fabric with the technological dissection of subject (thread by thread) won me over entirely. How amazing to create such vibrant luscious portraits by weaving thread! Looking closely (pun not intended), I could see all the individual threads woven together and was completely mesmerized and throttled with awe. I want one of these things hanging in my house!
Here is a little something on Chuck Close’s process in making the jacquard tapestries:
To create his woven editions, Close works with Magnolia Editions’ Donald Farnsworth to develop a digital instruction set, called a weave file, translating the daguerreotype image into data which can be read by an electronic Jacquard loom in Belgium. This customized Dornier loom uses 17,800 Italian dyed cotton warp threads woven at 75 shots per cm, generating colors via different combinations of eight warp thread colors and the ten weft thread colors selected by Farnsworth. A color palette must be developed for each tapestry edition containing all of the necessary values. A weave file is then constructed based on this palette. “There is more raw data in one weave file,” explains Farnsworth, “than if you combined the text of all of Shakespeare’s plays.”
--- Nick Stone, from this short article
As if I wasn’t already completely in love with “the new Close,” I turned around and saw this massive piece hanging on the wall across from the tapestries:
I walked over to this enormous piece (approximately 6 feet tall) which also looked like a photograph from across the room. But as I got closer, I realized it had a depth and a three dimensional quality to it. It is actually a collage of layers of handmade paper pulp. So it’s like an enormous collage that becomes a portrait.
The C Word (collage) is what completely converted me and changed my ambivalent attitude toward Chuck Close’s work (the double C). It suddenly dawned on me that even his earlier grid work is a kind of precise collage method, and you know how I love collage work.
So, I’m adding to my To Do list: 1) Check some Chuck Close books out of the university library and 2) Watch that Chuck Close documentary my friend Jillian told me about. In other words, I need to get closer to Close and learn more about him. I always like when I am able to see things in new light.
I took the photos above with my camera, so they are photographs of the artwork hanging in the SFMOMA (and therefore not the best quality). Here are a couple other Chuck Close images I found.
Two jacquard tapestry pieces of artist Cindy Sherman (who I love and who it makes total sense that Chuck Close would use as a subject for his art):
Detail on another piece of Close’s paper pulp work:
Bean said, “I love his art, Mom.” She grabbed my hand, walked me over to the canvas, and started explaining how Chuck Close paints with grids. I then remembered how much fun Bean and I have had at the Tucson Museum of Art looking at the Chuck Close piece they have there. She loves getting up really close to his work at watching it disintegrate into an abstract grid, then slowly stepping back until the subject comes into focus. Hell, I had fun doing that too.
But the painting that we were standing in front of at the SFMOMA was different. For one thing, it was much more recent and the scale was so enormous. For another, the paint was so much more vibrant and thicker than the earlier work. I took one look at it and said, “You’re right. I do love it. I need to reconsider my ambivalent relationship to Chuck Close.”
Then I stepped into the next gallery, and that’s when I feel in love. I saw these two enormous pieces hanging on the opposite wall. From a distance, they looked simply like large photographs, but as I got closer, I noticed that there was a subtle texture to them, a kind of “earthy” warm depth to them coupled with the kind of technological scientific observation of a photo reproduction. I discovered that they are tapestries. They are giant woven portraits, over eight feet tall, massive in scale, beauty and richness in texture and material, but they also contain a kind of clinical observational quality, much like detailed renderings of scientific subjects. The meshing of media, the scale, and merging of the natural warmth of fabric with the technological dissection of subject (thread by thread) won me over entirely. How amazing to create such vibrant luscious portraits by weaving thread! Looking closely (pun not intended), I could see all the individual threads woven together and was completely mesmerized and throttled with awe. I want one of these things hanging in my house!
Here is a little something on Chuck Close’s process in making the jacquard tapestries:
To create his woven editions, Close works with Magnolia Editions’ Donald Farnsworth to develop a digital instruction set, called a weave file, translating the daguerreotype image into data which can be read by an electronic Jacquard loom in Belgium. This customized Dornier loom uses 17,800 Italian dyed cotton warp threads woven at 75 shots per cm, generating colors via different combinations of eight warp thread colors and the ten weft thread colors selected by Farnsworth. A color palette must be developed for each tapestry edition containing all of the necessary values. A weave file is then constructed based on this palette. “There is more raw data in one weave file,” explains Farnsworth, “than if you combined the text of all of Shakespeare’s plays.”
--- Nick Stone, from this short article
As if I wasn’t already completely in love with “the new Close,” I turned around and saw this massive piece hanging on the wall across from the tapestries:
I walked over to this enormous piece (approximately 6 feet tall) which also looked like a photograph from across the room. But as I got closer, I realized it had a depth and a three dimensional quality to it. It is actually a collage of layers of handmade paper pulp. So it’s like an enormous collage that becomes a portrait.
The C Word (collage) is what completely converted me and changed my ambivalent attitude toward Chuck Close’s work (the double C). It suddenly dawned on me that even his earlier grid work is a kind of precise collage method, and you know how I love collage work.
So, I’m adding to my To Do list: 1) Check some Chuck Close books out of the university library and 2) Watch that Chuck Close documentary my friend Jillian told me about. In other words, I need to get closer to Close and learn more about him. I always like when I am able to see things in new light.
I took the photos above with my camera, so they are photographs of the artwork hanging in the SFMOMA (and therefore not the best quality). Here are a couple other Chuck Close images I found.
Two jacquard tapestry pieces of artist Cindy Sherman (who I love and who it makes total sense that Chuck Close would use as a subject for his art):
Detail on another piece of Close’s paper pulp work: