"I want to build powerful, aggressive images."—Chuck CloseChuck Close's absorption with [composer Philip] Glass's image seems thoroughly appropriate, for an analogy may be drawn between their work.
Get Up Close with an Artist's Quote
"I want to build powerful, aggressive images."
—Chuck CloseChuck Close's absorption with [composer Philip] Glass's image seems thoroughly appropriate, for an analogy may be drawn between their work.
As Robert Rosenblum has noted, Glass's music is composed of what at first may seem monotonous, repetitive tones, electronically amplified in a way that nearly conceals personal style. Yet the experience becomes a kind of slow immersion in a sonic sea, where the structural anchors of the score tend to be washed away by the mounting sensuous force of the cumulative sound.
By a similar means of almost mechanical repetition of predetermined forms, Close also creates works in which simple components combine to produce images that are visually astounding in their infinite detail.
Source: National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and Boston, New York, Toronto, and London: National Museum of American Art with Bulfinch Press, Little Brown and Company, 1995).
Pictured: Chuck Close, born 1940, Phil III, 1982, cast paper pulp, 68 x 52 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of an anonymous donor.