Chuck Close: Life

Christopher Finch

Hardcover | 18.5 x 3.5 x 23.5 cm | 352 pp

Prestel | 2010 | 9783791336770 

For decades Chick Close's (1940-2021) larger-than-life and unflinchingly honest paintings of friends and family, and self-portraits have won admiration from a wide audience. Having reinvented portraiture for the late twentieth century, he became one of America's most famous artists.

In this book Christopher Finch offers an intimate, revealing portrait of the artist. Close's inspiring story is one of overcoming obstacles, pursuing artistic integrity, and striving always to learn and grow. Finch, a veteran writer and critic who knew Close intimately since his early days in the rough-and-tumble bohemia of 1960s SoHo in New York, tells Close's inspiring personal history - his struggle with learning disabilities as a youth and his triumph over a medical catastrophe (a collapsed anterior spinal artery) that left him almost completely paralysed below the neck. How he regained his ability to make art and not only resumed but, as many believe, surpassed his previous work, is an unparalleled story.