Creativity personality close print

C

lose started his career as a profe ssiona l photographer and p ainte r. He projected his p h ot o g r ap h s of p o r t r a i t s onto large canvases, and then painted them onto the canvas in the style of the photorealists of his day. While many of his contemporaries were doing photorealistic landscapes and cars, Close revived the art of portrait painting.

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ater in his career, Close began breaking out of the photorealism school. While he still created portraits from photographs, he began experimenting with various mediums including fingerprint painting, scribble etching, linoleum and woodcut, mezzotint, rug making, and handmade paper. This separated his work.

O

ver the years, Close’s portraits became less and less photorealistic.

He started incorporating grids into his work and although from a distance many of his works look realistic, up close they are actually made from abstract shapes filling portions of the grid. Although grids have been used for centuries in art, Close has been instrumental in making them popular features in postmodern artworks. •

I

f one defines creative personality by the

realistic at the same time because it was no

all mediums. He not only introduced some

ability to analyze a situation to come up

longer concerned with painting the observed

printmaking mediums into photorealism, but

with a new solution to a problem, to bring

object or person. Rather, the work was once

also put together divergent styles, like when

together diverse ideas from various sources in

removed from the person and the painted

he used the collaborative process in Japanese

a unique way, and to move against the popular

image was meant to look like the photo. This

Ukiyo-E printmaking with European-style

tides when he sees fit, s/he can identify all of

changed the way the photo was percieved by

prints. His work brought together diverse

these qualities in the life and works of Chuck

artist for the forseeable future.

time periods, mediums, and cultures to create

Close. In a day and age when modern artists

a truly original body of work.

were becoming less and less objective in their

C

lose continued to work on portraiture,

work, Close decided to make art that was

but also introduced more abstraction

Creative Personality

more realistic, in a sense. While artists have been using photography as a basis for artistic creation since Degas, who tried to paint candid paintings to capture gestures in ways

over time starting with fingerprint paintings to scribble etched paintings. His works still retained some of the photographic quality, but he brought back more an more abstraction

that artists never did before the advent of the

into the process, which even brought together

camera, generally the artist attempted to hide

the ideeological differences between the

the use of the camera as some considered it

Y

et, Close wasn’t satisfied with continuing

photorealists and other prevalent movements

to do photorealistic portraits in oils

of his earlier days. It is these qualities that

and acrylics. He successfully introduced

make Close an excellent representative of the

openly used photography as the basis for

many different mediums into his portraits

kinds of creative learning styles that we have

their art, they even tried to copy the glossy,

that were never used before as if to say that it

been discussing in our coursework. •

unrealistic sheen of photo paper. In a sense,

isn’t the medium that is important in making

the work was both more realistic and less

the artwork. Similar results can happen in

cheating. In Close’s art, and also the art of the other photorealists, the artists not only

A

s a child, close had difficulty memorizing facts for school. As a result, he developed systems for himself to help aid his memory (Sultan, n.d.). In his creative processes, Close credits these systems that he developed as child with his ability to think in layers and to solve problems. For this reason, Close relates all of his creative successes to printmaking. He wrote, “Virtually everything that has happened in my unique work...can be traced back to prints” (p. 9).

Aside from that the works are all based on the process of layering abstractions to create a sense of photography and realism, his art processes are completely divergent borrowing styles from different eras and cultures, and inventing new ways to give his artistic voice to older processes. For example, introducing the grid, not only as a method for drawing accuracy, but also as an integral visible structure of many of his artworks allows him to reveal more about his process of combining abstract

Close’s Creative Process The thing that makes printmaking the source of his creative inspiration is that regardless of how photorealistic—like Alex in the top center frame—or how abstracted—as in Lucas at the far right—the process is the same. Close takes abstract layers and builds them up one layer at a time to put together visual information using the printmaking process. This allows him to systemize his art like he did with his learning back when he was younger.

with realism in his works. Each of the pictures on this page show the grid in varying degrees. In Alex, it is an invisible element that underlies the process. In the others the grid takes on different meaning and shape, as in the case with Lucas. These processes make his work truly unique among his contemporaries. •

Factors Inhibiting Close’s Creativity

T

he photograph on the previous page shows Close working in his studio. As you can see from the image, Close has suffered a spinal chord injury which has left him partially paralized. While one may see his paralysis as a limit to his ability to create his artwork, it in fact has expanded his creative abilities in that he has had to develop new ways to work around his disabilities. He works from a wheelchair and often paints with a brush tied to his wrist to compensate for his inability to hold a brush. Furthermore, when he creates prints, he borrows from the Japanese Ukiyo-E process, which is more collaborative than its European counter part. In Japanese culture, typically woodblock prints are made using three collaborators, the artist, the wood carver, and the printer. Each one has his/her expertise.

The artist draws out the image on paper, which is then affixed to the block.

The carver then carves the image into the wood block or blocks. Finally, the printer inks the blocks using brushes and then pulls the prints onto paper using a baren. Close had been using the Ukiyo-E process prior to his injuries, but now it is an integral part of all of his printing and other art verntures. So, in a sense, his creativity was actually enhanced by his injuries as he had to bring together diverse ideas to build a process to compensate for the abilities that the paralysis took away. •