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  Drawing Modern: Works from the Agnes Gund Collection > Highlights of the Exhibition > Chuck Close (American, born 1940) John/Fingerprint, 1983
 
 
Chuck Close (American, born 1940)
John/Fingerprint, 1983
Colored inks on paper
48 x 38 inches

Chuck Close (American, born 1940)
John/Fingerprint, 1983

Not portraits in the traditional sense, Chuck Close’s works explore perception using photographic close-ups of the face as a starting point. For this portrait of the artist John Roy, Close painted in stages, applying separately each of three basic hues used in the color-printing method (magenta, cyan, and yellow), replicating the mechanical process that fuses the individual shades into complex colors. Close used his own fingers to apply stamp-pad ink in the three hues directly to the paper.

The fingerprint serves as a kind of “found,” predetermined mark, one that shows little or no gradation within itself, though the artist can vary
the pressure to create heavy or lighter imprints. The self-referential nature of the fingerprint as a sign of the artist makes this piece a comment on the nature of the artist’s craft itself—literally, the hand of the artist. This point is underscored by the fact that Close “signed” the piece with three fingerprints, one for each color, at the bottom.

Page 2 of 8 | On the next page: Lucian Freud (British, born 1922)
Head of a Man, 1986