Preview

Chuck Close Essay Example

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1598 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Chuck Close Essay Example
IS THIS ME ?

Chuck Close’s Self-Portrait* (1967-1968)
In this paper I will explore critically on Chuck Close’s Self-Portrait* (1967-1968). I will begin by describing and display the significance of this piece. I chose Chuck Close’s Self-Portrait* (1967-1968), as my thesis image, this work is an example of the excellent superealism and photorealism that Chuck Close is capable of and known for. In the first stage of his painting career, he did a lot of abstract paintings and later he focused on new ways to portray the human figure, since 1964. His work was superealistic and gigantic in size featuring atypical art subjects with empty facial expressions. In this huge self portrait he catches every tiny detail of his face, the mussy hair, the shadow that hair created on his forehead, the cigarette, the smog of the cigarette, the mole on his neck, and the reflection on his glassed. He highlights details even a camera would not capture. This self-portrait is 263×213cm, almost 10 times bigger than his body. I think mostly people don’t see themselves in this size, and more important that they don’t face them self through painting, this unique way and let other people define your identity. The sheer scale and meticulous attention to his body has a profound impact on the viewer, the viewer is under his watching, covered by him. His facial features are removed from the familiar and made into something to be confronted by.
Through this paper I attempt to conceive and illustrate a compelling interpretation of Chuck Close’s self-portrait through the lens of body art. I will define the idea of body art while considering the writings of Ewa Lajer-Burcharth’s article. I will also examine and compare the Chuck Close’s self-portrait with Gary Hill’s video Inasmuch as it is always already taking place , Cindy Sherman’s photography , and Mona Hatoum’s Corps Etrange from the view of body art.
In this paragraph I will present the basic characters and artful differences between

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Del Kathryn Barton

    • 674 Words
    • 3 Pages

    “Analyze an example of a self portrait painting by one artist through the Subjective and Structural Frame.”…

    • 674 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    His use of colour has expanded in the last decade, with many works depicting the ochres and crimsons of the Australian desert. Macleod’s work, ‘Self Portrait/ Head like a Hole’ is constructed with oil paints and a wide variety of individual meaning. The figure to the right in the painting is painted with great texture and detail. This work doesn’t have exact meaning but the viewer can create its own. His works are very individuality to him as they symbolise his thoughts and not being directly narrative and sparse in meaning.…

    • 1733 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Using the aesthetic qualities in my 2D drawings, I have explored confronting images. This is done through the use of definitive and gestural lines that outline either the underweight, boney bodies or the round and curvacious bodies. I have cropped areas of the woman’s form and focused specifically on the torso and legs of the body, as seen in Potential Direction #4, #5, #1 and #8. This idea removes the identity of the woman because her face is not included and to some extent, not important to the overall concept. The sexualised images of the woman creates vulnerability because it suggests that she is an object and nothing more. I believe this contributes to the…

    • 1055 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Del Kathryn Barton

    • 484 Words
    • 2 Pages

    “Kaliman Gallery Blog: Del Kathryn Barton / The Age / Saturday 31 May 2008. Ed. Kaliman Gallery. 31 May 2008. Web. 16 Oct. 2012. <http://kaliangallery.blogspot.com.au/2008/06/del-kathryn-barton-age-saturday-31-may.html>.…

    • 484 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Portraiture Case Study

    • 2116 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Frida Kahlo De Rivera (1907- 1954), was a Mexican artist whose works “were strongly linked with her own life experiences, whilst also relating to world events, politics and the wider art world.” Kahlo is best known for her self-portraits, they demonstrate her need for self-expression and her exploration of identity. Although her physical features and eccentric costumes are striking and eye-catching, it is her internal life that explodes beyond the canvas. Kahlo’s unique portrait style jumps straight to the art of profoundly felt passions and sorrows. “Juxtaposing the familiar with the strange, marrying naturalistic depiction with bizarre symbolism, Kahlo is able to convince us…

    • 2116 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Yasumasa Morimura

    • 623 Words
    • 3 Pages

    His provocative works dressed as Marilyn Monroe sold in the tens of thousands of dollars per color print. Some critics interpret the constant self-portraits as a form of vanity and self-gratification, in order to gain wealth and fame. But regardless of this, he continues to take risks as an artist with his choice of subject matter.…

    • 623 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    One of Rodin’s key goals and greatest successes in creating his sculptures was to evoke the “fleeting mobility” of the human form (Brucker). He boldly states that “it is the artist who is truthful and it is photography which lies, for in…

    • 1473 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    However most of his major work were focus on self- portraits and describe the feeling of the characters’ feeling. Rembrandt was also famous by oil painting and carvings. Rembrandt Van Rijn said “choose only one master- nature” or he also said “I cannot paint the way they want me to paint and they know that too.” Basic on the two quotes that he had said, we can tell that he tried to make his works as naturalistic as he can. He would draw what he saw, the way he feel and understand. He could not paint what people what people expected him to do. To me, that is a reason all of his works considered to be very…

    • 687 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    He begins his autobiography with, “This is the only portrait of a man, painted exactly according to nature and in all its truth, that exists and will probably ever exist,” meaning…

    • 345 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Essay On Photorealism

    • 2084 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Human figures are also treated in the same detached fashion, which tends to dehumanize them, as in Chuck Close’s Self-portrait (Figure 1) in which he renders himself through the distortions made by a glass tile. The representation of light, as well as the interaction of light and color together, has concerned artists throughout the ages. By using slide machines to project images onto bare canvas Photorealism for the first time unites color and light together as one element. The capturing of light is most especially evident in the highly reflective surfaces of steel and…

    • 2084 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cindy Sherman

    • 481 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Cindy Sherman was one of the well known and most respected photographers in the late twentieth century. Rather than doing self portraits for her photographs, Sherman depicted herself in the roles of B- movie actresses. On one level, Sherman’s work appears to be subversively linked to ‘low’ art characterized by ‘b-grade’ film and photography, on another level, her work is regarded as the modernist ideal of the ‘high' art object. Sherman has raised challenging and important questions about the role and representation of women in society, the media and the nature of the creation of art. Sherman has been acclaimed as the subversive feminist that has boldly confronted issues concerning the female body. Even though some critics look at Cindy’s works as demining the women and exposing the women into low standards through her photographs, Cindy had a strong message for the viewers. In 1992 Sherman embarked on a series of photographs now referred to as "Sex Pictures." Sherman is not in any of these photographs for the first time in her career as an artist, yet she uses dolls and prosthetic body parts posed in highly sexual poses. She chose to often photograph up close and in color both female and male body parts which were purposely meant to shock the viewers. Sherman continued to work on these photographs for some time and continued to experiment with the use of dolls and other replacements for what had previously been herself. Critiques imply that the viewer is guilty for the negative readings of Sherman’s images. In a way Sherman’s constructed image of woman is innocent, and the way we interpret it is based on our social and cultural knowledge. Referring to the reaction of a gallery visitor who criticized Sherman for presenting women as sex objects, I would say that the visitor’s anger comes from a sense of his own involvement because the images speak not only to him but from him. Critiques depicted Sherman as a whore for producing such photographs but…

    • 481 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Moreover, Cubism turned toward a system of representing bodies that utilizes small planes set in shallow space. In the way that cubist painters rejected the inherited concept that art should mirror nature, my self-portrait negates any traditional ideas of realistic interpretation of form. Also, I did not adopt traditional techniques of perspective, but rather emphasized two-dimensionality of the paper. My image was fractured and reduced to geometric forms while using multiple vantage points – just as the Cubist painters did. Given these points, my neutral palette recalls Braque’s experiments of composition rather than vivid color. Thus, allowing the viewer to focus on the different views of the subject.…

    • 402 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Giorgio Morandi Themes

    • 757 Words
    • 4 Pages

    I think the critic himself was amazed that there was no attempt to travel beyond his studio table, make any kind of symbolic reference, or join the major artistic movements of the decades, with only internalized concepts and non-political desires, "inorganic and dateless" ever shown on the paintings, meant to slowly "seep deliberately into one's attention." One factor that the writer pointed out was that there was a lot of editing and scaping that went into each still-life the man created, drawn from actual words spoken by the painter during an much earlier interview.…

    • 757 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Parallelism Homework

    • 441 Words
    • 2 Pages

    1. In the movies, all college men are portrayed as single and having other attributes such as money, good looks, and a great personality.…

    • 441 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Modernism

    • 1192 Words
    • 4 Pages

    He spent most of his life promoting himself and shocking the world with his controversial thinking expressed through his paintings and films.…

    • 1192 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays