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View at the museum ↗Alex
Chuck Close1992
- Attribution
- Chuck Close American, 1940-2021
- Medium
- Ukiyo-e color woodcut on ivory Japanese wove paper (Kozo # 550)
- Physical dimensions
- Block: 59.7 × 49.6 cm (23 9/16 × 19 9/16 in.); Sheet: 72.5 × 58.7 cm (28 9/16 × 23 1/8 in.)
- Credit line
- William H. Bartels and Max V. Kohnstamm Prize Funds; Katharine Kuh and Marguerita S. Ritman Estates; Gift of Lannan Foundation
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Source rights statement: Public-domain image eligibility not established by this export
View the museum record ↗From the museum
This aggressively frontal portrait of artist Alex Katz is Chuck Close's largest and most ambitious print to date. Based on a Polaroid, the monumental screenprint is the result of a meticulous and complex technical process, consisting of seven stages and thirteen proofs. The two smaller woodcuts, also on view-composed of dots, dashes, and abstract shapes-closely mirror the artist's characteristic painting process, exemplified by his larger painting of Alex Katz in the museum's permanent collection. As versions of the same image, they provide an opportunity to glimpse some of the stages in the production of Close's large-scale portraits.
Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0