Alex

Chuck Close's "Alex" (1991) is an oil on canvas portrait from the artist's mature period, when he was creating his monumental, photorealistic portraits of friends and fellow artists. Close (1940–2021) revolutionized portraiture by working from photographs and translating them into paintings of extraordinary scale and detail. "Alex" depicts the artist Alex Katz, a fellow painter and friend. The painting is based on a Polaroid photograph, which Close then transferred to canvas using a grid system, building the image cell by cell. The scale is typically monumental, the face filling the canvas and confronting the viewer with an intimacy that is almost uncomfortable. Close's technique in this period involved building each cell of the grid with abstract marks—circles, lozenges, and other shapes—that combine at a distance to create a coherent image. This approach makes the painting both a representation of a face and an abstract surface of marks. Close continued to paint after a spinal artery collapse in 1988 left him partially paralyzed, adapting his technique to work with a brush strapped to his wrist.

Close's grid-based portraiture was one of the most innovative approaches to representation in late 20th-century art, bridging photorealism and abstraction and influencing generations of painters.

This monumental portrait of Alex Katz exemplifies Close's revolutionary approach: a face built from abstract marks that resolves into startlingly vivid presence only when seen from the proper distance.