Artwork Page for Paul III

Details / Information for Paul III

Paul III

1996

Chuck Close

(American, 1940–2021)
Culture
America
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
Framed: 259.6 x 213.5 x 7.5 cm (102 3/16 x 84 1/16 x 2 15/16 in.)
Credit Line
Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund 1997.59
Copyright
© Chuck Close, courtesy The Pace Gallery
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
Not on view
Print
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Did You Know?

In 2005, composer Phillip Glass was commissioned by concert pianist Bruce Levingston to write a 15-minute musical portrait of Close.

Description

Throughout his career, Chuck Close has relied on portraiture as the key component in his art and is known for paintings in which his subjects' faces loom large. This monumental painting represents a new direction his work took in the mid-1990s. The entire canvas is filled with a portion of the subject's tightly cropped, frontally positioned face, and background space is almost totally eliminated. Close does not accept commissions—he paints only self-portraits, members of his family, friends, and people associated with the art world. His paintings are derived from photographs taken of his subjects. For this work, his model was Paul Cadmus (1904–1999), a prominent American figurative painter best known for his works of the 1930s. In the 1960s Close began to use a grid to organize his compositions. In Paul III this grid is rotated 45 degrees, forming diamond shapes that are filled with bright, multicolored circles, loops, and dots. Each diamond is an independent abstract painting, bursting with energy, gesture, and color. The overall effect is like a kaleidoscope, always changing as the viewer moves. Up close, the image is nearly impossible to read. At a distance, however, the individual elements crystallize into recognizable facial features.
Vertically oriented oil painting created entirely from diamond shapes filled with organic, multicolor rings and depicting the tightly cropped-around face of Paul Cadmus, a man with light skin tone and blue eyes, looking out at us. Organic rings of pastel purples, greens, and oranges fill the diamonds shading the lighter portions of his face, darkening at creases around his eyes and mouth and his eyebrows. Blues and browns color his eyes and shirt collar.

Paul III

1996

Chuck Close

(American, 1940–2021)
America

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