Overview
For three decades, Chuck Close has challenged the accepted boundaries of the printmaking tradition. This book, published to accompany a retrospective of his prints organized by Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston, and traveling to The Metropolitan Museum of Art and several additional museums around the country, is the first comprehensive survey of Close's revolutionary prints.Featuring exquisite reproductions of the prints together with essays on Close's career and in-depth interviews with the artist and his master printmakers, Chuck Close Prints highlights the intensely collaborative nature of Close's projects. Close may labor on a single print for as long as two years, working out aesthetic problems by retrieving a centuries-old European method or creating an entirely new technique (such as applying sunscreen to block light). According to Close, "Prints have moved me in my unique work more than anything else has."
From the artist's ambitious first mezzotint to his recent pulp-paper multiples, this book chronicles the genius of Chuck Close in the medium in which he has done his most exciting work. Taken together, these prints constitute a remarkable self-portrait of the creative drive, vision, and intellect of one of America's most important living artists.
Synopsis
"Close's relationship to printmaking is in the tradition of Durer, Rembrandt, Goya, and Picasso--who all used printmaking for its unique qualities as a creative process and as a means of solving esthetic issues. The interviews give a real sense of Close's enthusiasm for printmaking and for process, and the detailed illustrations are fascinating."--Judith K. Brodsky, Founding Director, The Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper
The New York Times
Chuck Close, the great postmodern pointillist printmaker, is a methodical perfectionist. Fittingly, Terrie Sultan, the director of the Blaffer Gallery, the art museum of the University of Houston, goes much deeper than the usual artist appreciation in Chuck Close Prints. After Sultan's introduction and an essay by Richard Shiff, an art professor at the University of Texas, Austin, whole chapters are devoted to each type of printmaking that Close has mastered. — Ted Loos
Editorials
The New York Times
Chuck Close, the great postmodern pointillist printmaker, is a methodical perfectionist. Fittingly, Terrie Sultan, the director of the Blaffer Gallery, the art museum of the University of Houston, goes much deeper than the usual artist appreciation in Chuck Close Prints. After Sultan's introduction and an essay by Richard Shiff, an art professor at the University of Texas, Austin, whole chapters are devoted to each type of printmaking that Close has mastered. — Ted LoosArt in America
If seen by enough people, Chuck Close Prints should go a long way toward correcting many misunderstandings about prints, not least the misapprehension that they must be the handmaiden to painting, a kind of 'quick fix.' For Close, who has a penchant for the conceptual reversals requisite in printmaking . . . prints have offered an unqualified extension of his practice, both expressive and technical.— Faye Hirsch
Choice
There have been numerous catalogs from exhibitions in which Close's prints were included and about a dozen on Close alone in the last ten years. . . . However, this catalog is one of the best ones.New York Times Book Review
Chuck Close, the great postmodern pointillist printmaker, is a methodical perfectionist. Fittingly, Terrie Sultan goes much deeper than the usual artist appreciation in Chuck Close Prints. After Sultan's introduction and an essay by Richard Shiff, an art professor at the University of Texas, Austin, whole chapters are devoted to each type of printmaking that Close has mastered.— Ted Loos