Chuck Close, Fanny.
I’m going to keep this week’s post as brief as possible. This week’s questions iiiiiissss:
What was the artist’s process?
Chuck Close is the most widely celebrated artist interested in exploring process. His subject matter is simple and can even be banal at times, but that’s because subject matter is not the most important aspect of his work. What Close really wants us to notice is the processes by which he creates his meticulously planned out portraits.
Throughout his career, Close has used all sorts of techniques that would drive most artists insane. He has literally taken process to a whole new level, working with various mediums such as paint, photography, paper, paper pulp, ink and textiles. In the earlier part of his career, Close used an airbrush and three colors (yes, three colors) of translucent paint to create gigantic photorealistic portraits. Later he used his mastery of color theory to create portraits made of thousands of layered colored circles. The above painting, Fanny, happens to be made out of fingerprints.
What I’m trying to say is, sometimes you just gotta appreciate a work for all the hell the artist had to go through just so you could get a kick out of seeing a portrait of an old lady that was created with a billion fingerprints.
K. A. S. Art Gossip! 