Curriculum Materials: Art in America
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Image 27 Chuck Close Questions: |
Think Questions Teacher Answer Key
1. Do you think this is a flattering picture of Frank? Why or why not?
2. What did Close accomplish in this painting that he could not have accomplished in a photograph? (It is 9 feet by 7 feet! It is far larger than a photograph.)
3. Why might Chuck Close paint his friend's PORTRAIT from a photograph rather than from life? (He felt a photograph could capture some truth about Frank that lengthy portrait sittings could not; he wanted to concentrate on the act of painting, etc.)
4. What makes this painting a PORTRAIT? (It shows the likeness of a friend of the artist.) What makes it more a painting of a photograph than a picture of an individual? (It shows the parts of the photograph that were out of focus-the artist didn't correct them for the sake of the portrait; the large size forces the viewer to see all the painted marks rather than the face when viewing the painting up close.)
5. Although Chuck Close has said that he is interested in his subject's personalities, it is often hard to see this in the paintings. Why might he want to leave out information about the individuals he paints? How does the enormous size of this painting contribute to the depersonalizing quality? How does his mechanical technique contribute to this quality?
6. A writer once referred to portraits like this one as "giant face-scapes." What do you think he meant? Do you think this is a good way to describe Frank? Why or why not?
7. Many of the early paintings in this image set are very small. Where could you hang a small painting? (Small interiors, private homes.) The photographs in the set are relatively small. Where could you display a photograph? Frank is huge. Where could you display it? (It could fit only in a very large space such as a studio, museum, gallery, corporate lobby, or very large home.) What does this say about developments in American art during the 1960s and 1970s?
8. Compare and contrast Close's painting Frank to
Dorothea Lange's photograph Migrant
Mother. Consider:
SCALE, degree of focus,
subject, etc. Then, compare and contrast Close's painting to
Copley's painting Mrs. Nathaniel
Allen. Do you think Close's
PORTRAIT of
Frank is more like
Lange's portrait or like
Copley's? Discuss.
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