Within a Sky Full of Earth

If you dig into Google and search for Chuck Close images you will find that famous close-up portrait of an untidy man, with glasses and a mustache, smoking a cigarette. That man is Chuck Close and the image is not a black and white photograph as it seems but an acrylic on canvas painting, it's called Big Self-Portrait and it was created in 1967 and 1968. That's his style. That's what he does with his life: painting himself out and making it as a living. I wonder if everyone could do that. Making their own portraits without the need to get any other job. But for the past decades Chuck has also painted others.

This book is the first comprehensive critical examination of one of the America's most celebrated living artists. Close reinvented portraiture almost four decades ago with a series of nine-foot-tall, black-and-white likenesses of himself and fellow artists, which astonished an art world dominated by minimalism and conceptualism. Close has since explored the possibilities implicit in his original breakthrough in an array of mediums. This lavish, large-format volume is the first to deal with all aspects of Close's career and to place them in a biographical context.
Christopher Finch's insight into Close's achievement comes by way of hundreds of studio visits and thousands of hours of conversation since he met Close in 1968. Finch provides an engaging, in-depth analysis of Close's portraits on canvas, from the continuous-tone airbrushed heads of the 1960s and '70s to the painterly "prismatic grids" of the past two decades. The more than 300 illustrations featured in the book include almost all of Close's paintings, a selection of his prints and multiples, and examples of his photographic oeuvre. Many unpublished photos from the artist's personal archive enrich the reader's understanding of his inspiring life and the fascinating processes he has invented to create his art. This beautifully designed volume reveals not only the variety of pictorial strategies Close has devised, but the extraordinary personality of the artist behind the work.

[MORE ON CHUCK AT WIKIPEDIA] + [IMAGES OF ONE OF HIS EXHIBITIONS]

And up to the end, as we sell books, the question is: Do you care for this book? Would you buy it and take it home so it could live with you for the rest of your life? If your answer is yes throw us an email. It's not an inexpensive book (+ 700 MOP$) but it's a real object of art that is worth living for.

Chuck Close: Work by Christopher Finch
PRESTEL • ISBN: 9783791336763 • Hardcover • 336 pages • 300 color / 45 b&w illustrations • 340 x 290 mm
[AVAILABLE BY DEMAND]