Research Paper2 Fall2010 BPL

8/8/2019 Research Paper2 Fall2010 BPL

1/8

Pettinati-Longinotti

Betti Pettinati-Longinotti

Adviser, Tony Apesos

Group 1, Research Paper 2

September 25, 2010

Comparative Analysis: Works of Chuck Close and James Esber with Practical Application

With this comparative analysis I will investigate paintings by two artists: Chuck Close and

James Esber. These artists work will inform my Art Heroes strand of portraits with murrini.

Both Close and Esber work with portraits and use photography as a process to scaffold and build

their portraits. I chose to do a comparative analysis of Close with Esbers work of two iconic

portraits of American presidents, one we know from our past, and one from the present. As I

have investigated the artistic tradition of portraiture in beginning my strand of works on my Art

Heroes, I have researched traditions of portraiture that inform my work. As my thread of

portraiture hinges on a tradition called Uomoni Famosi, so do the two pieces I am comparing.

The Uomini Famosi tradition, which was the practice of decorating the palace walls with

famous men, originated in the Middle Ages. These men were sometimes alive, sometimes dead,

sometimes legendary, and often a combination, is probably a result of the historical and cultural

distance between the painters and the original sources for this subject matter and the

dissemination of the theme by a wide variety of artists in the palaces of local princes (Joost-

Gaugier 184).

The first portrait I examined is one by Chuck Close and his portrait of

Bill Clinton, created in 2006. It is oil on canvas is 108.5 x 84 inches (see

Figure 1).This portrait of Clinton was created after his Presidency and while

1


2/8


his wife, Hillary, was running for the office of the New York Senate. Some of

the portraits created by Close are not necessarily of people iconic to the

general populous, but for most Americans we realized the real life soap

opera that endured in his second term of office, in addition to knowing his

face as our 42nd President (Sooke). Early in Closes career he deliberately decided to

paint friends that would be unrecognizable to gallerys viewers. I wanted every man and every

woman no-one in particular. I certainly didnt want to rear into Andy Warhols territory of

superstars,Close repeated (Stones). Some of the subjects in this exhibition, particularly the

artists, are no longer unknowns despite his intentions. Close is a portraitist who rejects the

conventional understanding of what a portrait is. His paintings subject everyone to the same

rule, the same grid of representation. He is a contemporary artist who has created a signature

style that is as instantly recognizable as anyone's since Andy Warhol (Stones).

His painting of Clinton follows this template grid of representation, taking the

photograph and through transcribing it, breaking it down to create a system of building a portrait.

The transformation of the photograph to the painting is a temporal process of transcribing in

the case of Chuck Close. He himself compares it to the act of knitting. While the Futurists

were attempting to return lost time to the medium using their simultaneous photography, Chuck

Close seeks just that immobility of the moment captured in time as the ultimate chance to

achieve authenticity. When Chuck Close reverts to a photograph and transforms its integrity into

an exquisite, colorful mosaic, his concern lies not in revitalizing lost vitality, but creating a new

vitality emanating directly from the painting (Poetter and Friedel 14-15).

Asserted within reading about Closes composition and color harmony is that he follows

in the footsteps of Cezanne in the breaking down of the composition and references Mondrian

2


3/8


and Giacometti and their inherent Minimalist grids (19-20, 35).

The second portrait I reviewed was that of the 16th U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln, an

American Uomini Famosi, created in 2004 (see Figure 2). This portrait measuring 48 x 33

inches, in plasticine. In an interview, Esber humorously reflects on his infatuation with the

image of Abraham Lincoln during his school days and his identity as a class clown, using and

involving Lincolns image in his antics of that identity (Storr). This is something that I, as a

school teacher, can humorously identify with in the understanding of the classical class clown

found in every school classroom.

Esbers portrait of Lincoln uses technology to distort the original source and image to a

kind of caricature versus a traditional portrait. Caricature to that extent is not so much a matter

of defacing, defiling one image with another hostile to it, but of a re-facing: uncovering the

absurd face concealed by the mask of the normal one. That such a face may strike the viewer as

unnatural yet totally recognizable merely proves that what defines character is not an inherent

and positive balance of qualities but the readily legible yet always unstable mix of whatever

qualities nature arbitrarily stamped on a chunk of reality, qualities that, no matter how they may

be remolded by the willful imagination, never entirely lose their telltale traits (Patterson).

Although the materials and outcome images of Closes and Esber portraits greatly differ,

they way they begin to construct and deconstruct the portrait are initially similar. Both artists

begin by using a photograph to break down the portrait into a grid and/ or posterizing the image

into a recognizable portrait.

While Close uses a color harmony to transcribe his portraits from photographs to

paintings, Esber uses color theory to translate photographs that were originally black and white,

or from paintings grey scaled and then posterized (Davis). While Close uses his eye to break

3


4/8


down the portrait image into a color value and intensity scale, Esber utilizes the computer to

break down the image using Photoshop mechanisms and filters, then distorts the image into a

caricaturized portrait using a complimentary color scheme.

The function of portraiture throughout history comes into perspective within both these

Presidential images of Lincoln and Clinton. Both Esber and Closes portraits elicit responsive

behavior from viewers as if the art works presented themselves in the form of a proposition.

This is so and so, and the viewers then behaved accordingly. Propositional statements are

fundamental to everyday experience because they articulate our beliefs (Brilliant). While

Lincolns identity is clear in Esbers painting, Esbers works tend to be more controversial as

their distortions evoke some absurdity and grotesqueness not present in the original portrait

(Patterson).

From the modern to contemporary artist, distortion and defacement in portraiture has had

an impact within our contemporary culture. Computer mechanized enhancements has further

influenced how artists can manipulate the portrait composition. The advent of the

personal computer has had numerous ramifications. The pioneering of

electronic morphing demonstrates how photographic portraits can be

manipulated digitally. The resulting images not only undermine traditional

expectations of portraiture but also suggested that identity was quantifiable

and transferable and thus, radically unstable, a development with profound

philosophical consequences (Goodyear).

In conclusion, my own work, beginning with Uomini Famosi in art,

borrows aesthetic and technical aspects from both Close and Esber, and

hopes to confront the function of a portrait within a contemporary lens. Like

4


5/8


Close, I wish to functionally connect traditionally to the portrait image. The portrait as an image

tends to identify the subject, which realizes the connection between the viewers awareness that

the art works they see are portraits, and their general knowledge that the artworks of this kind

always refer to actual persons Because portraits require some discernible connection between the

visible image and the person portrayed in order to legitimize the analogy some degree of

resemblance, a restriction on the images freedom of reference, has brought about the use of the

term likeness as a synonym for portrait. Despite the frequency of its use, the term has its

problems (Brilliant 25).

Technically and aesthetically however, I am more closely tied (no pun intended) to Esber in the

breaking down of the portrait image through gray scale and posterization. I am intrigued as well

that one of Esber teachers professors was Josef Albers, whose work with color interaction I

have an affinity to. He was a prolific glass artist before immigration to America (Davis). In

some of my next writings I hope to ask the question of why Art Heroes connected to Uomini

Famosi, why these art heroes specifically and additionally why glass and technique.

My question differs from Close and Esber, as the individuals whom I wish to study are

less iconic within the popular world, and therefore initially less identifiable. Unlike Close and

Esber but more like the Uomini Famosi of the Middle Ages, my portraits potentially will propel

these questions: Who are these people? Why are they being portrayed and what are their

contributions to the human race that substantiate their portrayal?

5


6/8


Figure 1: President Bill Clinton, 2006, 108.5 x 84 inches, Oil on canvas

http://fineartforum.ncl.ac.uk/arthistory/bec_stones/bec_stones02/billclinton.jpg

6
http://fineartforum.ncl.ac.uk/arthistory/bec_stones/bec_stones02/billclinton.jpghttp://fineartforum.ncl.ac.uk/arthistory/bec_stones/bec_stones02/billclinton.jpg


7/8


Figure 2: Untitled (Light Green Lincoln), 2004, 48 x 33 inches, Plasticine

http://www.jamesesber.com/art_work/plasticine/07LightGreenLincoln.html

7
http://www.jamesesber.com/art_work/plasticine/07LightGreenLincoln.htmlhttp://www.jamesesber.com/art_work/plasticine/07LightGreenLincoln.html


8/8


Bibliography

Brilliant, Richard.Portraiture. London: Reakiton Books Ltd, 1991. Print.

Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration. Dir. organized by Blaffer Gallery. Perf. Chuck

Close. Corcoran Gallery of Art, 3 July 2010. Corcoran Gallery of Art: ExhibitionOverview. Web. 9 July 2010. .

Close, Chuck. Chuck Close. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1998. Print.

Davis, Brendan,James Esber, Art-Interview.com, Issue 11, Feb, 2009

For Chuck Close, an Evolving Journey Through the Faces of Others . Dir. Jim Lehrer. Perf.Chuck Close, Christopher Finch. PBS, 6 July 2010.PBS Newshour. Web. 7 July 2010.

Goodyear, Anne Collins. "Digitization, Genetics, and the Defacement of

Portraiture."Smithsonian Institution Summer 2009: 28-31. Print.

Guare, John. Chuck Close: Life and Work. New York: Thames and Hudson, Inc, 1995. Print.

Joost-Gaugier, Chritiane L. "A Rediscovered Series of Uomini Famosi from QuattrocentroVenice." The Art Bulletin 58.2 June (1976): 184-105. College Art Association. Web. 26

June 2010.

Poetter, Jochen, and Helmut Friedel, eds. Chuck Close. New York: Distributed Art Publishers,1004. Print.

Patterson, Tom, The Fine Art of Distortion Winston-Salem Journal, January 28, 2007.

Sooke, Alastair . "Chuck Close: Capturing the Clinton charisma."http://www.telegraph.co.uk/.

Telegraph.co.uo, 6 Oct. 2007. Web. 23 Aug. 2010.

Stones, Rebecca. "Chuck Close: Family and Others." http://fineartforum.ncl.ac.uk/. Fine Art

Forum, Web. 23 Aug. 2010.

Storr, Robert, Taking Liberties, James Esber(catalog essay), Pierogi Press, April 2006.

8
http://www.jamesesber.com/text_pages/artInterview.htmlhttp://www.jamesesber.com/text_pages/artInterview.htmlhttp://www.jamesesber.com/text_pages/artInterview.htmlhttp://www.jamesesber.com/text_pages/FineArtofDistortion.htmlhttp://www.jamesesber.com/text_pages/FineArtofDistortion.htmlhttp://www.jamesesber.com/text_pages/FineArtofDistortion.htmlhttp://www.jamesesber.com/text_pages/TakingLiberties.htmlhttp://www.jamesesber.com/text_pages/TakingLiberties.htmlhttp://www.jamesesber.com/text_pages/TakingLiberties.htmlhttp://www.jamesesber.com/text_pages/artInterview.htmlhttp://www.jamesesber.com/text_pages/FineArtofDistortion.htmlhttp://www.jamesesber.com/text_pages/TakingLiberties.html

Documents

Research Paper2 Fall2010 BPL