Chuck Close - Leslie/Fingerprint

1986_28a.jpg

Chuck Close (American, b. 1940), Leslie/Fingerprint, 1986, carbon transfer etching, Eugenie Mayer Bolz Endowment Fund purchase, 1986.28a

Throughout history, portraits have been seen as “stand-ins” for the person they portray. Loved ones look at portraits of someone who has died or lives far away, handling them as if they are the humans themselves. Portraits of rulers were reminders of power and status. Typically, portraits reveal something about the subject(s); scholars are shown with books, musicians hold their instruments, children may cradle their favorite toy. Some patrons told artists how they wanted to be represented, but it can be argued that all portraits are manipulated by the artist in some way, giving viewers a unique blended image of subject and artist. Contemporary artist Chuck Close, however, goes completely against the idea of portrait as "stand-in." He often uses his own family and friends as subjects1, but refuses to suggest any semblance of personality. Close hints at identity, but only illusion is revealed; all is left for the viewers' speculation. More specifically, in Chuck Close's 1986 carbon transfer etching titled Leslie/Fingerprint, in which the sitter was the artist's wife at the time, one sees nothing but a face. Yet, in recognizing the complexity of Chuck and Leslie's relationship and life together, it would be impossible to depict her in any other way; Close masked Leslie in ambiguity because there is no way to recreate how he saw and felt about her on a two-dimensional plane.

Upon first observation of Leslie/Fingerprint, one is left in search of more answers. From a distance, Close’s print resembles a photograph. He depicted Leslie in great detail, showing only her face and part of her shoulders. The large scale of the print works to monumentalize her, but also allows for a close examination of the various aspects of her face. Thousands of fingerprints craft the details of Leslie’s head. Fingerprints and the narrowing in on the face, a human’s quintessential identifier, directly link to a sense of identity, but there is no sense of Leslie’s individual identity. One is reminded of her uniqueness as a human being, but blocked from her personality. She wears earrings and a collared shirt, but one does not know if those have any significance for her. Leslie shows no sense of emotion or a connection to viewers, but gazes blankly at an unknown beyond. The white negative space behind her separates her from any context. What are her hobbies, interests, or favorite foods? What is her level of education? Who are her friends and family? Where is she from? Without any research or background knowledge, little can be said about Leslie. Close leaves her anonymous and up for interpretation. For Close to portray a woman to whom he was married and whom he knew so well, it seems at first unusual to omit any trace of her personality.

Chuck Close met Leslie Rose in the mid-1960s when he was teaching drawing classes at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Leslie was a freshman student in Chuck's class and proved to be a talented artist herself. At first, Leslie did not like Chuck at all; she did not appreciate his unprofessional attitude and demeanor (coming to class looking unkempt or even intoxicated on more than one occasion). Despite this first impression, the two did end up becoming good friends and soon after, romantic partners. With Leslie, Chuck began to get his life straightened out. Unfortunately, Chuck's mother was known to dislike Leslie, but Chuck always stood up for Leslie in times of conflict. In 1967, he proposed to her and they moved into a small apartment in New York City just months later. Their first years in the city were not at all glamorous; Chuck described their neighborhood as "rags and rats."2 Continuing to work on his art, Chuck often went to Leslie for critique on his work. On evenings and weekends, they would attend performances or parties hosted by friends.3 In 1973, the couple gave birth to their first daughter, Georgia. As Chuck's artistic career grew, the family found themselves traveling a lot for his shows.4 At this point, Chuck's art career was really booming, and Leslie had begun a successful career in landscape architecture. In 1984, their second daughter, Maggie, was born.5 Around this time, Close would have been working on Leslie/Fingerprint; a time of financial stability, family growth, and accelerating careers.

Close's "heads," as he called them, were not initially intended as portraits of their subjects. Close said,

"The first heads. You know I didn't call them portraits, I referred to them as heads. I denied any tradition of portraiture....I was very aware of [other artists] who kicked the door open for an intelligent, forward-looking kind of figuration...that wasn't trying to breathe new life into shopworn nineteenth century notions of figuration and portraiture." 6

Close is said to have later claimed that his interest in portraiture was meant to challenge art critic Clement Greenberg's statement that portraits could not be undertaken by modernist artists.7 He played off of ideas sourced in Frank Stella and Andy Warhol, among others. Close wanted works that would confront viewers with their frontality, but remain figurative.8 Unlike Warhol, Close was uninterested in popular celebrity subjects.9 The symmetry and mapping of people's faces appealed to him; though each face is unique, the eyes, nose, and mouth are consistent in placement.

The face as subject may also have to do with Close's battle with a condition called prosopagnosia, or "face blindness," which makes it difficult for him to see faces clearly.10 The monumental scale of Close's "heads" allows him to better portray small detail of the face. Every freckle, wrinkle, and lose hair are portrayed, but to Close, these are merely individual objects; the whole face reveals nothing for him. Although audiences feel that sense of disconnect between a face and no personality, Close does not see faces as conveying identity.

Each of Close's portrait "heads" begins as a photograph taken of the subject by a professional photographer.11 They have been said to resemble drivers' license or passport photos, even mug shots. To prevent a more personal aesthetic, Close often told his subjects to show little emotion or keep a straight face to prevent any personality from being put forth.12 His works never attempt to capture his subjects' personal character, but work to depict the "illusory" person that "existed only for the fraction of a second that the camera's shutter was open."13 Though Close uses both photography and print-making techniques or painting, he emphasizes the limitations of both. Photographs, thought to reflect real life, can only show a single moment in time. Portraits by an artist's hand using paint, ink, etc. are mediated through the lens of the artist. Anything that is not real is merely an illusion.14

Throughout their marriage, Close employed Leslie as a subject more than once, using various techniques. Christopher Finch, one of Close's biographers, notes that Close's portraits of Leslie are not necessarily flattering, but are not unattractive either. "His paintings of Leslie...have a very different flavor from those of almost anyone else, including other family members....She is not treated as a muse."15 Finch describes a certain intensity present in how Close portrays Leslie that is not in portraits of other subjects. She is not an idealized beauty, but a raw face. The illusion is not in a lack of detail or an unrealistic view of Leslie, but in the medium itself. Portraits give only fragments of a person's life; Close echoes a fragmentary depiction in the build-up of fingerprints. Small fragments compose the whole image.

Earlier "heads" were created based on a grid system, overlaid on the photograph Close took of his subject(s). The "thumbprint technique," that he developed in 1977, veered away from the grid, allowing him to freehand details with the curve of his finger. Varying tones are determined by how much pressure he puts on his thumb. Close first places the thumbprints onto mylar. The drawing is transferred to a copper plate, which is then etched, and printed.16 He said of this technique, "My fingers are not capable of certain kinds of nuances. And I rather like that. I like the physicality. I like playing with the feeling of the pigment, feeling how much I'm picking up, feeling how much I'm putting down...."17 The artistic process that went into Leslie/Fingerprint, along with similar works, reveals a sense of closeness and intimacy that the final outcome may lack. Close used his own fingerprints to craft the face of his wife. Though the whole would have been unfamiliar to him, working on the print involved hours, days, and weeks of looking at details of his wife's face. Robert Storr describes the process as "flesh being used to evoke flesh."18 Close describes his fingerprint works as differing from his earlier "heads." Around the time of its making, he said, "I feel much more sentimental about the images. I've chosen most recently to paint the people who really I am the closest to."19

With the intent of creating public images, it is clear why Close would choose to leave personalities ambiguous, especially when working with subjects he was so close to, such as his wife. It would be impossible for viewers to look at Leslie's face and see all that Close feels when he is actually in her presence. One could never see her as their wife, the mother of their children, their critic, and their close friend. Close and Leslie's meeting in Amherst, their life in New York City, their unpleasant first neighborhood, their mutual friends, their favorite restaurants, and their evolving careers cannot be shown in a single portrait. Viewers simply cannot see Leslie as Chuck sees her. Though one can get a sense of the intimacy and complexity of their relationship evoked by the use of fingerprints; there is a feeling, an underlying emotion, but no specific details. Close acknowledges the power of interpretation when a work of art goes public. An artist can see his/her own work in any way that they want to see it, but once it reaches the public eye, audiences will interpret it in different ways. Images take on their own life and power when brought under the speculation of many.

In analyzing Leslie/Fingerprint, one is constantly reminded of the illusion of image-making. The portrait of Leslie can never be a "stand-in" for Leslie, the real person. Close does not craft life on a page, but compiles fingerprints. The indexical reference merely leaves viewers with a feeling of absence. He reminds viewers that people are so much more than what can be seen in a painting or a photograph. They are their experiences, personalities, hobbies, and relationships. Close gives audiences ambiguous subjects because each person is not defined by a single aspect of their character. The Leslie in Close's print can be anything that a viewer can contrive in their minds, but she can never be the real Leslie; she is nothing but an image.

Erin Green

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1National Gallery of Art Online, "Friends and Family," Chuck Close, http://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/Education/learning-resources/an-eye-for-art/AnEyeforArt-ChuckClose.pdf (accessed 12 Nov. 2015).

2Christopher Finch, Chuck Close: Life, New York: Prestel Publishing, 2010, 116.

3Ibid., 128-130.

4Ibid., 181.

5Ibid., 230-231.

6Robert Storr, "Interview with Chuck Close," Chuck Close (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1998), 86.

7Finch, 140.

8Ibid., 138-139.

9Storr, 87.

10Finch, 140.

11Ibid., 151.

12National Gallery of Art Online, "Friends and Family," Chuck Close, http://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/Education/learning-resources/an-eye-for-art/AnEyeforArt-ChuckClose.pdf (accessed 12 Nov. 2015).

13Finch, 153.

14Jochen Poetter and Helmut Friedel, eds. Chuck Close (Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 1994), 21.

15Finch, 225.

16"Chuck Close," Pace Editions, Inc. (Tampa, U.S.F.)

17Margrit Franziska Brehm, in Chuck Close, eds. Jochen Poetter and Helmut Friedel (Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 1994), 81

18Finch, 209.

19Brehm, 81.

Catalogue
Chuck Close - Leslie/Fingerprint