I love Chuck Close. (Charles Thomas Close; he apparently wished that he'd been able to use the professional name Charles, but everyone now knows him as Chuck...This link is to wikipedia which has done an excellent job of compiling links to interviews and pages. I recommend the Pace Gallery page for an easy overview and the Smithsonian Archive of American Art for an oral history interview for biography/thoughts).
I'm not a tremendous fan of his art, though I appreciate the work that goes into the photo-realistic work that he does. I find myself stuck usually at the point of "Wow, that's amazing drawing"; I like that the size of the work makes his subjects monumental and uncompromising. But I'm afraid that they don't move me to think about who the individual is as a personality, as a subject.
But Chuck Close as an artist moves me.
Close was born with prosopagnosia, a disorder where faces are unrecognizable. One coping mechanism is often to work with small segments of the face, combined with other traits such as voice or walk, to help identify people. Close's work, dividing the face into small parts to focus on it pore by pore almost, is a way to take that "disability" and turn it into art.
Many folks with prosopagnosia, and Close is one, also find that they also have trouble reading and writing; dyslexia is a common linked problem, perhaps because there is a certain amount of object recognition in language (?not an expert). Close was lucky enough to have art as a way of going through school; in the article, he discusses turning in a mural design of the Lewis and Clark trail instead of a paper.
"I figured out what I had left and I tried to make it work for me. Limitations are important."
Close is now in a wheelchair, stemming from an event in 1988 where a spinal artery collapsed. He continues to work, using a tricked out wheelchair and specially designed brushes and hand supports.
The article is about him speaking to students at the Roosevelt School in Bridgeport CT.; the school uses arts programs (the Turnaround Program) to help develop students' academic skills. In a place where 80% of students read or do math below grade level, this is a huge commitment to teaching and learning differently. This is only something that can be done as a labor of love and belief, with lots of sweat and commitment. Money. It's a way of teaching differently, something that has been on my mind always and in particular with the focus on Adam Lanza as a student before the Newtown massacres (no links; I cannot bear it).
But part of what inspires me about Close is how art functions in his life. "There is no artist who enjoys what he does every day more than I do. ...Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up for work." He has found the way art expresses his very self, the way it stands in the "gaps" of how he functions, that helps him interact with the world. I would argue that this is the inspiration in his work. But in making art part of his person, it's work--every day is a joy and a chore. The art is a thing he does that makes him happy but because it is part of his whole being he has days when it is work, when it is just the very same as being in your body and standing at a sales counter or on the factory floor or at the desk.
It seems to me that Close got lucky--a combination of perseverance and understanding on his own part, understanding mother, some sympathetic teachers (mixed in with the "sticklers", his word from the interview), finding art as an outlet. I hope that because of his activism and public attention to learning and art other kids will "get lucky". And it's important that kids find Close's ideas early--know what your limits are and use them, push them, and work at it every day. It's hard for me--I teach kids who are often settled in their academic ways by the time they reach me and my own nature is to be what Close would call a "stickler"--I love words so it's hard not to embrace papers and reading and writing; I want my students to love to express art and art history but my natural inclination is for words. I want my students to have that ability to read and write because the world is bigger for having stories to go with the pictures, if you see what I mean. But maybe there's a place in between for being sensitive to students who have difficulty and finding ways to stretch the place where they struggle, while using art to inspire them (if there isn't, I'm in the wrong biz...)
