Chuck Close Quotes
"You know, the way art history is taught, often there's nothing that tells you why the painting is great. The description of a lousy painting and the description of a great painting will very much sound the same."
- Chuck Close
(Related: Art, History, Nothing, Painting, Sound, Will)
"Sometimes I really want to paint somebody and I don't get a photograph that I want to work from."
- Chuck Close
(Related: Work, Want)
"What difference does it make whether you're looking at a photograph or looking at a still life in front of you? You still have to look."
- Chuck Close
(Related: Life, Difference)
"Part of the joy of looking at art is getting in sync in some ways with the decision-making process that the artist used and the record that's embedded in the work."
- Chuck Close
(Related: Art, Work, Decision, Artist, Joy)
"Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience."
- Chuck Close
(Related: Experience, Life, Time, Painting, Space)
"Most people are good at too many things. And when you say someone is focused, more often than not what you actually mean is they're very narrow."
- Chuck Close
(Related: People)
"It's always a pleasure to talk about someone else's work."
- Chuck Close
(Related: Work, Pleasure, Talk)
"It doesn't upset artists to find out that artists used lenses or mirrors or other aids, but it certainly does upset the art historians."
- Chuck Close
(Related: Art, Artists, Historians)
"I'm plagued with indecision in my life. I can't figure out what to order in a restaurant."
- Chuck Close
(Related: Life, Indecision, Order)
"I think most paintings are a record of the decisions that the artist made. I just perhaps make them a little clearer than some people have."
- Chuck Close
(Related: People, Artist, Decisions)
"I discovered about 150 dots is the minimum number of dots to make a specific recognizable person. You can make something that looks like a head, with fewer dots, but you won't be able to give much information about who it is."
- Chuck Close
(Related: Information)
"I did some pastels and I did other pieces in which there was just basically one color per square, and then they would get bigger and I could get 2 or 3 colors into the square, and ultimately I just started making oil paintings."
- Chuck Close
(Related: Colors, Oil)
"I always thought that one of the reasons why a painter likes especially to have other painters look at his or her work is the shared experience of having pushed paint around."
- Chuck Close
(Related: Experience, Work, Thought)
"All the fingerprint paintings are done without a grid."
- Chuck Close
"I'm very learning-disabled, and I think it drove me to what I'm doing."
- Chuck Close
(Related: Learning)
"Sculpture occupies real space like we do... you walk around it and relate to it almost as another person or another object."
- Chuck Close
(Related: Sculpture, Space)