I couldn’t figure out where to go. My girlfriend and I drove all around town, looking at local art in small galleries and in coffee shops. I struggled to find some piece of art that spoke to me. I was getting impatient and grumpy. The day had already been stressful. Finding art in Winston Salem was the last thing I wanted to be doing at the time. Almost out of resignation, we drove through the front gates of the Reynolda House to take a look at their art museum. After a stern warning to silence our cell phones, we followed the receptionist’s directions and found ourselves looking at a selection of American Impressionist paintings. Many of them were more interesting than I had expected, and I found myself compelled to look at many of them for a decent amount of time. I started to feel like I had found something that I might be able to write about.
Then I came across Edward Potthast’s painting The Boat Builders, from 1904. This image immediately grabbed my attention because it nearly matched the framing of a picture I took on vacation in Maine a year ago. The location was almost identical as well; based on the content of the painting I immediately recognized it as Maine. Unfortunately I cannot seem to find a reproduction of the painting online, so I cannot show you the painting. But I do have my photograph, which should at least give some sense of the content of Potthast’s painting:
Imagine this same image, pulled back a bit, and with men working on building boats at this same type of launch. Then maybe you can approximate Potthast’s painting in your mind.
We continued to explore the gallery and I left the main part of the museum under the impression that I would be writing about either Potthasts’s The Boat Builders or another piece I enjoyed by Gilford Beal called The Mall - Central Park. (It was strikingly vibrant; from a distance, my mind initially thought it was a photograph). Eventually we made our way out of the gallery space and decided to explore the rest of the house. The house was compelling, but we moved through it fairly quickly until we got upstairs to another small portrait gallery where I discovered the work of Chuck Close hanging on the wall. I suddenly knew what I was going to write about.
I first became familiar with Chuck Close’s work when I saw a documentary on the American composer Philip Glass, who Close famously photographed decades ago. I recognized his work in the documentary as work that I had seen at some point before in my life but I could not quite place where. With a little research I learned the basics of Chuck Close and shortly thereafter forgot about it. Then I saw his work in The Keith Series on display at the Reynolda House.
The Keith Series is a series of six drawings and one study in which Close experiments with how to depict the image. Each one is a different representation of the same image of Keith Hollingworth, a friend of Close’s. I find myself wrapped up in the detail of his work in this series. I especially love one particular version. This version was a contrast to the others because instead of making dark marks on a light background, Close made light marks on a dark background. He used varying amounts of white paint to control the contrast in the image. This immediately drew my attention and I spent more time staring at this version than any of the other six. The contrast was very compelling, making the image appear sharper than the other versions. It also struck me how it might have been difficult to wrap the brain around doing basically an inverse operation from the previous six versions. It is almost as if he had to decide what darkness to take away in order to uncover just enough lightness to make the right image. Now that I think about it, that idea has a lot to do with photography or filmmaking. You let light hit something dark in such a way that it is recorded onto a negative, and the correct image is produced from that negative. So in a way, Close created his own negative, but inversed it so that the image still looked anatomically and physically accurate, with light skin and dark glasses frames and clothing.
This is a reproduction, not the actual piece. I couldn't find the actual piece online.
I think I feel an attachment to Close’s work because of its sense of appreciation of the details. The idea that the tiny pieces add up to the whole is a powerful one to me, especially as a film editor. The meticulous nature of assembly appeals to me. Close combines tiny elements, each specifically constructed in their own right, into a larger piece that has a different meaning than simply the sum of its pieces. It is similar to combining individual scenes, composed of individual shots, into a larger film, which has some kind of thematic idea beyond simply the plot of the narrative.Close started working in portraits in the late 60s and continues to work in portraits today. His work is widely recognized across the globe, and interestingly is the only artist in recent memory to refuse an offer to have his or her work displayed in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Close suffered a paralyzing spinal aneurysm in 1988 and had to learn a new technique to continue painting in his condition. He developed his style of individual smaller elements composing a whole in therapy. His work in portraits was famous before his injury, but his work since the aneurysm is widely appreciated.
How might I compare it to what we have studied this term? I am struck by how his portraits, because they are so close to the subject, are almost mannerist in style. They exaggerate the features of the face into massive size and scale. His work also demonstrates a specific artistic style, characteristic of mannerist artists.
Finding Close’s work at the Reynolda House was quite a surprise. I have not seen Close’s work in person before, and it was a real treat to see it. I hope I get the opportunity to find his work more often.
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