ANTHONY CRISAFULLI

WRITINGS

The Phoenix Rises

The Remarkable Chuck Close

- Anthony Crisafulli

Modern American Art has only produced two great

portrait painters, the rst, Andy Warhol, was a product
of the Pop movement which dominated the 1960s.
The other is Chuck Close -- who emerged as the preemanate trompe loeil painter from the Pluralist Era.
In 1974 in Arts Magazine, Henry D. Raymonds lead
essay argued that the artists from the Pluralist era,
have two sources of self-esteem. They have broadened
the base of the buying public while being taken
seriously by the art world. They have their cake and
also eat it. They make visual embodiments of societal
values. Their world is cool and beyond freedom and
dignity. They share their publics mistrust of the
instinctive and the spontaneous and the messy. They
lust after specicity and certitude . . . Their culture
believes in things and little else. The following
interview with Chuck Close is an in-depth and
intimate re-examination of his life, career and
reections on American art since the 1970s. As this
interview unfolds one thing is abundantly clear, Chuck
Close is more than an extraordinary artist; he is,
indeed, a remarkable man.
Crisafulli: Whats on your mind these days?
Close: Well, certainly working methods or processes
are always in the back of my mind, but then no
painting every got made without a process. For me it
has always been the way I have tried to keep moving.

The one variable that became more interesting to alter

would be that one that would change what I
considered in the studio. If I would have just changed
subject matter or other aspects of the work, Id still be
doing the same thing. I can still nd more to do or get
worried it might become too outmoded or I can get
too good at it. So, one thing that I try to do is keep
altering various aspects of the working methods or

ANDY WARHOL
Andy Warhol (1928) was born in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and attended
the Carnegie Mellon University where
he majored in pictorial design. After
graduation (1949), Warhol moved to
New York where he established
himself as a commercial illustrator
working for such magazines as Vogue,

Harpers Bazaar, Glamor and The

New Yorker. Although he found
success in the commercial world of
illustration and art directing through
out the 1950s it would not be until the
1960 that Warhol would nd his true
aesthetic voice. But when he did, it
set the art world on re.
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ANTHONY CRISAFULLI

traditions or materials just to keep myself engaged in

what Im doing and if it seems like a fresh experience
to me then hopefully the viewer might nd that too.
I always like the journey to be part of it. I drop
crumbs along the trail for the viewer to follow -whether intuitively or analytically.
smart while others are immature.
Crisafulli: Your newer work reminds me of digital

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enough to know that on some level I am doing

something similar. All the work from the beginning,
even the continuous tone things that people think
looks like photographs were actually made in
incremental units; building blocks about six inches
square. Its just that nobody saw the units because
the edges were fudged and smooched together
appearing as if it was a continuous surface -- but in
fact it was built unit by unit. It was a way to focus
on one area and maybe not worry so much about the
whole. Breaking it down gave me an arms length
distance from what I was doing. Ive often thought
it was, in some ways, a little like quilting or
crocheting, that you could pick up and put down.
You got a few minutes you sit down and work on
your quilt. You maintain an almost naive belief in
process: you start on it and keep working on it and
eventually nish it. Its a kind of a leap of faith.
Crisafulli: Does this allow for more time for
rumination?

imaging, is it still about the photograph or is it

moving somewhere else?
Close: Theres still a photograph in there
somewhere. But I know absolutely nothing about
that other stu. Im totally technologically illiterate.
Im going to be dragged kicking and screaming into
the twenty-rst century as one of the last people to
have the slightest idea what a bit or a byte or
whatever the fuck those things are. But I do know

Close: I suppose it does but the interesting thing is

it allows more room for intuition. When I had
everything in the world open to me and I was
working all over my painting at once I made the
same fucking painting over and over and over.
When I could invent any shape, I made the same
shapes over and over. When I could use any color, I
would use the same color combinations over and
over. One of the things that grew out of this way of
working was I could construct a situation that
would not allow me to make the last painting; which
would force me to make a dierent painting. It was
a way to pre-ordain movement, not necessarily
growth, not necessarily progress, but, at least
movement, to move from where you are to
somewhere else. That was part of the appeal. When
I narrowed things down by having quite severe, selfimposed limitations I nd myself making shapes
Ive never made before, I found myself using colors
Ive never used before, making edges and things Ive
never made before. I found it incredibly liberating.
Crisafulli: I had this discussion with a friend
before I came in here about a very similar thing. We
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was talking about a buddy of ours who had certain

nancial resources at his hands and how it might
have stunted his growth.

scanning the faces of those I know and love and

committing them to memory than I was probably to
anything else.

Close: Absolutely. It can be crippling. Nobody in

this country is as crippled as the children of the
wealthy who are living on trust funds and such,
because nothing they do makes any dierence. On
the other hand, I was born poor white trash. So I
always knew if I was going to accomplish anything I
was going to have to cut my own path... no one was
going to keep the door open for me. Furthermore, I
had really severe learning disabilities so I wasnt
going to be able to take the normal route. I grew-up
so dyslexic, I couldnt memorize anything, including
faces -- which is rather funny. Somebody that Ive
just seen on the street is as familiar to me as
somebody I used to live with. I have to keep
reinforcing and seeing the face over and over and
over at regular intervals to keep it in my brain. You
can see where this could be problematic but visually
informing. A strange ramication of this imparity is
that it is much easier for me to remember
something that is at than something that is threedimensional. If you move your head a quarter inch,
its a whole new image and I have to learn the image
all over again... but if its at, I move my head and it
doesnt really change. So I think that I was driven to
work on something that wasnt going to change. I
guess thats why I was probably more interested in

Crisafulli: How do you limit your deviations? Were

you ever tempted to do something that was not a
portrait?
Close: I do other things. I did photographs of
other things. I do nudes, I do owers, and stu like
that, but I never cared enough about them to want
to make a painting. So theres that aspect; that I
simply cared more about people than about rocks or
trees or whatever. I get plenty of opportunity to
make shapes and stu. You know, I make a million
interesting little shapes. I dont really have a desire
to make some big abstract shape. Its the one thing I
nd innitely sustaining. I would not have predicted
thirty years ago that I would nd it so sustaining
and that thirty years later I would still be engaged in
painting portraits. Everyone knows or cares about
faces. Whether they want to admit it or not you get
a sort of a mirror whenever you look at whomever
you are with, whomever you love. Youre bombarded
with at images, TV, movies, that sort of thing, but
everybody knows something about faces. Believe
me, you fuck up a face a little bit and everybody is a
critic. Whereas if you were to make a texture of a

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ANTHONY CRISAFULLI
bark of a tree a little o; nobody but a botanist would
care.
Crisafulli: What did you think of the last biannual? It

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Close: In the fties it really was a survey of what was
going on. It was practically everything that was going
on. Practically had the entire art world in that... even up
to the sixties and into the seventies you could see every
gallery that showed contemporary art in New York in
one afternoon. You started at 68th street-- until the end
of the sixties you didnt have to come downtown. It was
possible to know everything that was going on in the art
world. Now thats impossible so the role of a survey
show is, I guess, to show you some of the stu you
missed from the galleries you didnt go to. Now it
becomes much more as a guided tour of what that
person found signicant.
Crisafulli: You said something once about how you
thought of yourself as an artist of the seventies who
developed in reaction to the pluralism of that time
period.

featured much young painters?

Close: Klaus Kertess was my rst dealer back in the
sixties, and Ive known Klaus since the sixties. I have
tremendous respect for him and I was very interested to
see what would come up in the biannual. I know that he
cares about painting. I thought that nally painting
didnt end up being that important in his biannual even
though there was much conjecture that it was going to
be a painting biannual. I thought the photography was
far more interesting.
Crisafulli: Do you think the Biannual is a survey of
whats best going on or just whats going on?

Close: I dont know if it was a reaction to it. The

seventies were an interesting decade because, as
opposed to the sixties and eighties, the seventies had no
art stars. It was a pluralistic decade, many dierent
things were going on, and I think it was great for artists
but it confused the shit out of curators and collectors
and critics because they would like to have the weeding
out process to occur within one stylistic point of view or
one attitude so they can say that this person is clearly
better than that person. How do you compare someone
who is doing conceptual stu with somebody whose
doing earth works, with somebody else who is doing
some kind of process stu, to someone else who is doing
minimal stu, all at once? You really had to make
dicult judgments about what was important.
My generation all came to New York in the
middle to late sixties, people like Brice Marden,
Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, Elizabeth Murray...
we were all able to develop without being in the
white hot glare of spot lights. I think that was a
real advantage.
If you look at the artists of the eighties or the sixties
many of them peaked, I think, very early and started a
long and steady decline. Sometimes I think its like ying

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to Boston in a shuttle. You just barely get up to
altitude, when youd like to level o and y a little bit
you actually start to descend.

Brice Marden

Crisafulli: Is that because their popularity happened

so fast?
Close: I think it was because there was such
tremendous interest, such popularity... every move
was analyzed and strategized. There wasnt time to let
them slowly develop their work. You know, there are
certainly exceptions. I think that is why so many
artists came up in the late sixties but were really
thought of as seventies artists. I think they are doing
some of their best work right now. There are kind of
legs to that generation, which have made them
more like long distance runners than sprinters.
Richard Serra
Crisafulli: I just nished writing an article on the
Brilliant show at the Walker Art Center, which
takes a serious look at the growing popularity of
young artists from the UK. They seem to have some
relationship, although more in practice than in
theory, with the artist from the seventies. What do
you think?

Joel Shapiro

Close: Actually I have a lot of interest and curious

faith in what they are doing. I think part of it is that
they dont have a tradition; they dont have the same
kind of baggage that they bring into the studio
everyday. People in other cultures, there really wasnt
local precursors... But they have to be careful not to
be sucked in too fast. You always have to watch
somebody like Charles Satchi. Look what hes done
to make and perhaps destroy some careers. If you let
someone own that much of your work, they end up
having much too much power. I never wanted
anybody to have that much power.
Close: In the eighties there were grants and
incredibly lucrative market situations. Now, both are
gone and this seems to be in disarray. Where do you
think it all began?

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Elizabeth Murray

Close: Something began to happen in the seventies.

I remember hearing a word I had never heard before
in my life. I was sitting in the Spring Street Bar,
having a drink, waiting for a friend and I heard a
couple of artists sitting next to me. One said, Ill do
this piece if I get funding. What the fuck is that? I
never heard the word before. All of a sudden it crept
in and you wouldnt make art unless someone was
going to be paying for it. Artists who used to be
pushing things around in studios began designing
things on the back of cocktail napkins at thirty
thousand feet on the way to their next commission. It
changes the nature of the art. All of a sudden artists
started saying things like, wouldnt it be amusing to
see ten more of these paintings where the colors
would be red, blue, and yellow instead of blue, green,
yellow, red? Then they would get some assistantto
make it. But you would never do that yourself. Youd
get bored in ten minutes. Then you ended up where
artists, instead of having a show every two or three

years, would have, maybe, three show simultaneously

in three dierent galleries. There are only so many
kinds of art you can make and make enough to ll
three galleries every year. When we think about
nancial pressures and stu like that in the art world,
we think of it just as dollars and cents as what
happens to the artist when he or she starts to make
money... but its all these things which are the byproducts which really change the art world.
Sometimes its going to change for the good;
sometimes its going to change for the bad.
Crisafulli: Is there anybody that is writing now that
you identify with?
Close: Its interesting. I was just at a dinner last
night talking about whom people were reading and,
boy, it was quiet. I think the modernists lost when
Robert Storr stopped writing criticism and started

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functioning as a curator. I think he was really a

wonderful art writer and critic. Now we get him in
catalogue essays but we dont get the regular monthly
articles he used to write in Art in America. I think the
poets are often interesting, Schendahl... one person
that I nd really interesting right now, whats his
name? The guy who is out in Nevada, in Las Vegas...
shit... Ill have to look up his name. Its such an odd
place for somebody whos an art critic. He used to run

Robert Storr

but they take so long for me to do them. For me to do

a series of paintings can take ve or six years when that
same number of paintings... you know, if I do three
paintings a year or four... so I might do twenty
paintings over a six year period. No one thinks that
twenty paintings are a lot of paintings in a series, right?
Most people would think that twenty paintings are a
few months. They would have series after series after
series... The fact that one of my series is spread over a
much longer period of time means that all these other
things will come and go and Im still doing it. In a way
it does insulate me. I dont think theres time for me to
incorporate political stu in my work.
Crisafulli: Actually, I saw one political thing you did;
a television commercial about handicap access in Soho.
Close: Ok, thats good.
Crisafulli: You were afraid, after you were chair
bound, that your work would be seen as something
that was done by a handicapped person in a diminutive
way.

Reese Bailey gallery in New York. He had a clean, welllighted space. I really like the way he writes. Hes
writing about things other people arent writing
about... things like beauty.
Close: In the eighties, when everyone was going the
way of the political ideologue, waving their bony
ngers of condemnation, you avoided the bandwagon.
Why?
I think I was always too slow to jump on one. I felt
that Ive been running... along... in... slow... motion...
while everybody else is driving by in very fast cars.
They can swerve and move and make all the
adjustments more quickly. I feel like Im ten or fteen
years behind my ideas. I have these things I want to do

Close: Right. Well, I dont mind being seen as an

artist with a handicap; I didnt want to be seen as a
handicapped artist. We all have handicaps. I know
people who are able bodied who are far more paralyzed
than I am. Its been incredibly... talk about sustaining.
One of the interesting things about being in a
wheelchair and having to reinvent a way to work has
really focused me. It has really prioritized a lot. There
are so many things I cant do any more that used to be
competing things that brought me pleasure. Well, now
I cant do that. I have more of my eggs in the art
basket. I have just my relationships with my family and
friends and my art and thats just about it. Its made me
a more focused person, perhaps a narrower person, but
narrowness has its pluses too.
Crisafulli: Theres a new kind of mythology thats in
your work now. I think people identify certain styles of
your painting with the accident.

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ANTHONY CRISAFULLI

Close: See, I dont think its really very dierent from

where I would have been anyway because it was
already moving in that direction. In fact a new book
that has just come out which is about my life since I
was in the hospital -- we decided to put in the work
from the show just prior to going into the hospital. So
you could see where the work was going. It didnt
change, I dont think. Yet, it did re-engage me in what
I was doing in a way that did make a real dierence in
the work. Ive always loved limitations. I loved them
when I was able bodied. Having been learning disabled
I was dealing with limitations of a sort which, I think,
put me in a very good position to deal with the
limitations which came along. They just became
something else to overcome.

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Close: The new show is work of the last few years.

Two portraits of Roy Liechtenstein, one full face and

Close: No. The rst thing I tried to do though when I

was still in the hospital and I was trying to go back to
painting was strap these brushes on my hands and
nurses or assistants standing at either side of me...
They could only hold my arms up a few seconds and
change the brushes, pull them out of the brush holder
and put new ones in. There were times when I just sat
there with tears streaming down my cheeks as I was
sitting there trying to paint. I thought, Jesus Christ,
this is too damn hard! On the other hand it was
simultaneously reassuring that I could still do it. The
rst paintings I made were actually tighter and had
smaller marks, smaller increments than what I had
been doing just before I went into the hospital. I think
I did it to prove to myself that I had enough control,
so that looseness wasnt just because I couldnt do it.
Looseness wasnt just lack of control. Things were
loosening up anyway and I wanted to do it... but I
didnt want to do it in some kind of spastic way as if I
had no control. So I had to prove to myself rst that I
could still do it the way I used to do it.
Crisafulli: Whats going to be in the new show?

Roy Liechtenstein

Crisafulli : When you have these limitations do you

nd that you confront them in terms of making an
ideal? When you paint do you think to yourself, I
want to make this painting look as if this accident had
not happened to me?

one prole, I thought for a little bit that it was going

to be a diptych but it didnt end up to be, and a
painting of ninety-two year old Paul Cadmus, and
Dorothea Rockburne. The Paul Cadmus and the two
Roys are color paintings and the Dorothea Rockburne,
Lorna Simpson, and two self-portraits that are black
and white. The incremental units have steadily been
getting larger and larger until now they are over two
inches square. So now its much coarser, much harder
to resolve the image from an average viewing distance.
They deconstruct, dematerialize, and icker even
more; they coalesce with greater diculty. They irt
with almost not reconstituting themselves again. They
play back and forth between the at read and the
marks on the surface warping into the image.
Crisafulli: What else do you love besides Art and how
does that play into your aesthetic?
Close: I guess the literature that I love the most is
literature where you never quite lose the sense that you
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are reading words and

love the way words
trip o the tongue. At
the same time we are
swept away with the
narrative and the
imagery and the story
being told, where you
go back and forth
between the artice
and the story itself. I
want to nd where Im
at with each mark
with its adjacent
marks the way a writer
will... theres never a
time a writer does
anything more than
shove two words up
against each other. If
you dont like that
word you cross it out
and put in another and
see how it eects the
next word. I do a kind
of rough draft where
I go through the
painting once. Then, I
turn the painting on
its side and I go
through it again. I do
some more ne tuning
and adjusting, and
then theres a sort of
nal editing process
and its all about
gradually moving
something towards
what I want instead of
preconceiving it. I nd
the resultant color by putting some color down very arbitrarily and moving that somewhere else and then moving
that closer to what I want by putting another color. Thats always been what interested me, even in the early work.
Between those early continuous tone paintings and these, the work became more and more about the increment,
but the increment used to be quite small: a sixth of an inch, an eighth of an inch, a quarter of an inch dot. There was
no room in a dot that small to have much variation.
- Anthony Crisafulli
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