Chuck Close

Chuck Close is briefly identified in Andy Warhol’s diary through his billboardlike Polaroids of faces and his reported influence by Warhol. The account places him within Warhol’s artistic orbit, then records a direct comparison: at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Warhol considered Close’s work stronger than the paintings in a separate show of 1940s art.

Identity and Artistic Connection

On June 2, 1981, Warhol set out with a companion to see an exhibition by an artist he and his circle had known for some time. Warhol initially could not recall the artist’s name, describing the work instead as billboardlike Polaroids of faces and noting that its maker had been influenced by him. The name came to him during the recollection: Chuck Close. That moment makes Close recognizable in the diary less through biographical detail than through a distinctive visual description and an acknowledged connection to Warhol.

The Whitney Visit and Warhol’s Judgment

At the museum, Warhol and his companion also looked at a work by Guglielmi downstairs and visited an exhibition of 1940s painting. He contrasted those painters with Close, deciding that Close was much better. The diary gives no extended account of Close’s exhibition or of the works themselves; its emphasis is Warhol’s immediate act of looking and ranking. Close’s brief appearance is therefore defined by a compact but emphatic critical judgment.

Portraiture and Significance

The diary’s broader account of Warhol’s portrait practice gives context to the reference to Close’s images of faces, while not establishing that the two artists worked in the same way. Warhol’s commissioned portraits began with about sixty Polaroid photographs; he selected an image, altered its crop and appearance, enlarged it, and had it made into a silkscreen. His assistants prepared canvases in flesh-toned backgrounds, and slight misalignment between painted color and the screened image produced the portraits’ characteristic shifting effect. Against that detailed account of Warhol’s own process, the description of Close’s billboardlike Polaroids marks a related concern with faces while preserving the diary’s distinction between their practices. Close’s entry remains short, but it records both an artistic influence running from Warhol toward Close and Warhol’s strong preference for Close’s work over the other paintings he saw that day.