Chuck Close

A prolific and celebrated artist, Chuck Close has worked for nearly four decades within a carefully defined practice focused exclusively on portraiture. Close’s own image, more than any other, is the touchstone to which he regularly returns. Starting with a source photograph, Close carefully transposes his image to a canvas or other surface using a grid. Cross-referencing painting, drawing, photography, collage, and printmaking, the resulting works are truly hybrid objects that merge manual and mechanical processes and explore boundaries between the personal and the social, the subjective and the systematic, the abstract and the representational. With nearly 100 self-portraits in a range of media, this exhibition highlights the trajectory of Close’s pictorial language over a lifetime, tracing the evolution of his process from 1967 to the present.

This exhibition is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Additional support has been provided by the Evelyn D. Haas Exhibition Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Margaret and Angus Wurtele. The San Francisco presentation is dedicated to the memory of Trustee Patricia A. Kennedy.

Hotel sponsor: St. Regis Hotel, San Francisco