Cv/VAR Series 177 publishes a study by the celebrated art historian and writer Edward Lucie-Smith of the leading American artist Chuck Close. Finding his early impetus in the photorealistic works by Richard Estes, as well as the surface shocks of Jackson Pollock's 'Tachiste' paintings, Chuck Close developed his own, highly resolved 'heads' (his preferred term to portraits), which are worked on a massive scale. Close is as much preoccupied with process as description, charting an intricate exchange between painting and the pixellated images of his subjects. Despite suffering a disabling spinal aneurism in 1988, the artist has continued to forge a monumental body of work in a variety of media: paintings, drawings, prints and photographs, of potent and original effect
