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. Charles Thomas Chuck Close (born July 5, 1940) is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits. Though a catastrophic spinal artery collapse in 1988 left him severely paralyzed, he has continued to paint and produce work that remains sought after by museums and collectors. Close currently lives and works in New York’s West Village and in Bridgehampton, New York. wikipedia.org