SPECIAL ARTICLE Pixels and Painting Chuck Close and the Fragmented Image James G. Ravin, MD; Peter M. Odell, MD he contemporary artist Chuck Close (1940- ) is well known for his large portraits of faces that are composites made from multiple small geometric forms. The individual elements of the images are very visible when viewed close up, but merge when seen at a distance. Close suffered from a collapsed spinal artery in the neck in 1988, which Tleft him partially quadriplegic, but he is still able to paint vigorously. Arch Ophthalmol. 2008;126(8):1148-1151 Chuck Close (1940- ) is one of the most THE IMAGES famous American artists working today. His distinctive paintings are huge can- When first confronted with a massive 2- vases that depict faces, often his own. He to 3-m face (Figure 1 and Figure 2), a works in a nontraditional manner by com- typical viewer is astonished by the mag- bining many small geometric forms, usu- nification of the image and its details, ally squares or rectangles, to create a por- which may or may not be complimentary trait. The individual elements he uses in or may reveal little emotion. After the ini- making an image may be termed pixels. tial response, the observer may note that The word pixel is a neologism used in com- the head is given little context and may be- puter technology to mean the smallest come fascinated by the technique. Close form in a digitized image and is a combi- has chosen his subjects from the chal- nation of the words picture and element. lenge that their facial details represent. He Chuck Close is a compelling indi- does little to model or round forms. His vidual who has endured a great physical compositions are usually based on pho- misfortune. In 1988 he experienced an oc- tographs taken with a large-format cam- clusion of a spinal artery in the neck, which era. He will retain the distortions in- left him quadriplegic. The occlusion has duced by his subject’s proximity to the affected the way he paints, but not his style camera and may even enhance the distor- of painting. Many experts have found it dif- tions. To cite one example, the artist Alex ficult to differentiate work done before the Katz (Figure 2) has complained that the onset of his quadriplegia from that done camera exaggerated the size of his small afterward. nose in portraits Close made of him.1 The paintings lead to important ques- The number of elements in a Close por- tions concerning visual perception and the trait has varied from a few hundred to more possibility of artificial vision. What deter- than 100 000. The individual pixels may mines our ability to combine many small range widely in size. Close or an assistant geometric units into a coherent image? will usually mark a grid pattern on a pho- How many different elements are needed tograph and then onto a canvas, maintain- to create an image? What are the effects ing the same proportions. To transfer the of changing colors within the elements? image to the canvas, he uses a set of co- ordinates, as though the photograph were Author Affiliations: Division of Ophthalmology, University of Toledo College of a map, with numbers on one axis and let- Medicine, Toledo, Ohio (Dr Ravin); and Department of Ophthalmology, Joan and ters on the other. Comparison of the pho- Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, New York tographs and the painted images reveals (Dr Odell). that he has often subdivided the grid so (REPRINTED) ARCH OPHTHALMOL / VOL 126 (NO. 8), AUG 2008 WWW.ARCHOPHTHALMOL.COM 1148 ©2008 American Medical Association. All rights reserved. Downloaded From: https://jamanetwork.com/ on 09/30/2021 Figure 1. Chuck Close, American (1940- ). Self-Portrait, 2000-2001. Oil on Figure 2. Chuck Close, American (1940- ). Alex, 1987. Oil on canvas, canvas, 274ϫ213 cm. Art Supporting Foundation to the San Francisco 254.6ϫ213 cm. Toledo Museum of Art. Museum of Modern Art. that a single square in the photo- tably his masterpiece, the portrait had been dyslexic as a child, he graph may be represented by sev- Adele Bloch-Bauer I of 1907, which adapted well enough to receive an eral squares on the canvas. More re- recently entered the collection of the undergraduate degree from the Uni- cently, he has been placing irregular Neue Galerie in New York. There is versity of Washington and a master forms within each pixel. Some- an even earlier precedent. Mosaics of fine arts degree from Yale Uni- times he has united 2 or more pix- from Greek and Roman antiquity versity. A Fulbright grant enabled els when he has wanted to empha- were made of stone, metal, and glass him to study in Vienna at the Akad- size particular features, such as fragments, and their regularly emie der Bildenden Ku¨ nste, which, portions of the nose or glasses spaced, colored elements are com- he notes ironically, was the same frames. parable with Close’s technique. school Hitler attended. He then Close’s technique has affinities to However, when we asked Close if taught at the University of Massa- the work of other artists. The late any of these earlier approaches in- chusetts and worked in the ab- 20th century American artist Roy fluenced him, he replied that he was stract expressionist style typical of Lichtenstein (1923-1997) used mul- not thinking of any of them when that era. One of his students, Leslie tiple small circles of variable size to developing his style. Certainly, he Rose, became his wife in 1967. Fol- mimic the elements of cartoon art. knew of these predecessors. He ex- lowing their marriage, they moved The pointillist artists who painted in plained that he was working from to New York City and Close taught France during the late 19th and early photographs and was aware of the drawing, painting, and design at the 20th centuries, such as Georges small, regular elements that are vis- School of Visual Arts. Thinking that Seurat (1859-1891), also worked ible in photomechanical reproduc- abstraction had been stretched to its with small geometric forms. They tions of magazine and newspaper il- limits, he turned in a different di- were trying to find an alternative lustration. Initially, his goal was to rection, toward realism. style but also sought a scientific recreate an enlargement of a photo- He began to work from photo- means of mixing light rather than graphic image on canvas, which graphs, in essence reproducing the pigment. The early 20th century evolved into his current, pixelated reproduction. He created large- Austrian artist Gustav Klimt (1862- format. scale, dramatic portraits that mag- 1918) incorporated geometric ele- nified facial details, whether or not ments into many of his paintings. BIOGRAPHY they were flattering. As a result of Brilliant irregular shapes, usually these oversized works, critics de- rectangles, cover much of the can- Chuck Close was born in Monroe, scribed him as a “photo-realist.” He vas in some of his portraits, most no- Washington, in 1940. Although he experimented with an airbrush, fin- (REPRINTED) ARCH OPHTHALMOL / VOL 126 (NO. 8), AUG 2008 WWW.ARCHOPHTHALMOL.COM 1149 ©2008 American Medical Association. All rights reserved. Downloaded From: https://jamanetwork.com/ on 09/30/2021 gerprint marks, fragments of paper biography describes what oc- ity. He is very generous with his time pulp, acrylic, oil, watercolor, print- curred: and energy and supports many chari- making, and even daguerreotype His wife, Leslie, was waiting for an el- table causes. photography. His recent paintings evator in their apartment building when have been highly sought by collec- she heard the phone ring. “As soon as I SCIENTIFIC CORRELATIONS tors, who may acquire them prior to got to the hospital,” she remembers, “he display. To illustrate the value of his had some kind of episode—chest pains. Close first exhibited a pixelated por- art, a Close portrait that was first He said he couldn’t move—he couldn’t trait in the fall of 1973. Just after that purchased for $9000 in 1972 sold for feel anything. The nurses were kind of show opened, he was amazed to see $4 832 000 at a Sotheby’s auction in dismissing it, thinking it might be the the November 1973 issue of Scien- New York in May 2005. result of whatever they had given him tific American at a newsstand, be- Close’s great catastrophe oc- intravenously. By the end of that night cause the cover contained a pix- he was paralyzed.” The seizure went on curred in 1988, when one of his an- for about twenty minutes, until he fi- elated, computer-generated color terior cervical arteries became oc- nally lapsed into a calm state. By then, portrait of George Washington. The cluded, leaving him partially he was almost totally paralyzed from the convergence of methodology aston- quadriplegic. He has become a dis- shoulders down. He could barely move ished him. Evidently, computer sci- tinctive figure in New York, where his head and neck; breathing was al- entists were experimenting with por- he ambulates in a motorized wheel- most impossible because only the up- traits in a manner very comparable chair and has a specially equipped per part of his lungs was working, the with his own. The computer im- van with a driver to facilitate his lower having filled with fluid. After ex- ages were made of multiple small tensive tests, his seizure was diagnosed travel. In retrospect, he dates his 2 rectangles, and the colors could be symptoms back 11 years before the as the result of an occluded spinal artery.