John II

John II is a classic example of the vividly colored, mosaic-like style of painting adopted by Chuck Close in the 1990s, based on photographs of artists, family, and friends taken by the artist himself. When this work is seen at a specific distance, hundreds of distinctly composed mosaic tesserae coalesce into a portrait. However, as one approaches, the work appears to dissolve into a purely abstract composition of form and color. In this sense, looking at the painting heightens the viewer’s awareness of the activity of looking and making sense of images.

Close frequently returned to a single photographic source to inspire multiple versions of the same portrait. The artist described this tendency as a response to his inability to recognize faces, sometimes referred to as "face blindness," offering him an alternative means of "commit[ting] images to memory." John II represents the second painting in a series of two based on the same photograph of the sculptor, John Chamberlain. For this work, Close laid down a diagonal grid in pencil on the surface of the photo before transferring the grid to the canvas. Turning the canvas diagonally, the artist proceeded to fill in individual squares with a single base color repeating this process across the entire grid, moving from one corner of the canvas to the other. Subsequently, he repeated a similar procedure: this time adding a variety of forms including concentric circles and lozenges in three or more contrasting colors. The result is a portrait about painting.

[1] Chuck Close, interview with Tim Marlow, "In the Studio: Chuck Close," 2011. Accessible online via whitecube.com/artists/chuck-close.