Chuck Close, known for creating huge, highly detailed, photorealist paintings of himself and fellow artists, has died aged 81.
The painter rose to fame throughout the 1970s and 80s, depicting peers including Philip Glass and Cindy Sherman. But his career was marred by numerous allegations of sexual harassment made in 2017 but dating back to 2005.
Born Charles Thomas Close in Monroe, Washington, in 1940, the artist was raised by his pianist mother and plumber father, who died when Chuck was 11. He struggled at school with dyslexia but, as a keen painter from an early age, he went on to complete a master of fine arts programme at Yale in 1964 alongside other artists who would find fame, including Richard Serra and Jennifer Bartlett.
Close made his first self-portrait in 1968. It remains one of his best known – the artist stares at the camera with unkempt hair, thick-rimmed glasses and with a lit cigarette wedged between his lips. Titled Big Self-Portrait, it lived up to its name at almost nine feet tall. Impossible to distinguish from a photograph, it portrayed Close as a rebellious figure, which was apt as he was going against the grain of the abstract and pop art of the era. The sheer scale of his work also set him apart from his photorealist peers – critics often said that to see them in person was a visceral experience.
Close added colour to his repertoire in the 70s, depicting his friend, the painter Mark Greenwold, in astonishing detail for the 1979 work Mark. A year later he had his first major retrospective at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Of his practice, Close once said: “Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.”
In 1988, Close’s career looked to be over after he was paralysed from the neck down following a collapsed spinal artery. After months of rehabilitation, however, he learned how to paint again, reinventing his style while using brushes strapped to his wrist. He is said to have told friends: “I’ll spit on the canvas if I have to.” His later work continued to receive acclaim with portrait subjects including Lou Reed and Bill Clinton.
In 2017, Close was accused of sexually inappropriate verbal behaviour by several women who had been posing for paintings alone in his studio. Close said he was “truly sorry” if he made the women feel uncomfortable and accepted he had spoken with a “dirty mouth” while assessing their bodies. But he did not accept the charge of harassment. A planned exhibition at Washington’s National Gallery of Art in 2018 was cancelled as a result.
Close was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2013, and then dementia in 2015. His doctor, Thomas M Wisniewski, told the New York Times that this condition could have been responsible for the actions he was accused of: “[Close] was very disinhibited and did inappropriate things, which were part of his underlying medical condition. Frontotemporal dementia affects executive function. It’s like a patient having a lobotomy – it destroys that part of the brain that governs behaviour and inhibits base instincts.”
Close died at a hospital in Oceanside, New York, from congestive heart failure. He is survived by his daughters, Georgia and Maggie, and four grandchildren.