{"id":1721,"title":"Frank","medium":"Acrylic on canvas","classification":"Paintings","dimension":"108 x 84 x 3 in. (274.3 x 213.4 x 7.6 cm)","object_name":"Painting","continent":"Americas","country":"United States","nationality":"American","dated":"1969","room":"Not on View","list":"highlights-of-the-contemporary-collection","role":"Artist","text":"The model for this painting was not Frank himself but rather an 8-by-10-inch photograph of him. Since the late 1960s, Chuck Close’s method has been to start with a photographic print that he enlarges and overlays with a grid. He then systematically transposes each gridded block directly onto the canvas or paper, meticulously refining and finishing the image. The result is a technically masterful and ironically monumental portrait. By his painstaking technique, he preserves the objectivity of photography. A work of such grand scope—typical of American painting after 1950—is unsettling, particularly when it features a colossal human head. “The large scale, ” Close said, “forces the viewer to read the surface of the painting differently . . . [to] look at it piece by piece.” The details, then, can be perceived either as facial pores and hairs or as an abstract pattern of black, gray, and white.","creditline":"The John R. Van Derlip Fund","accession_number":"69.137","artist":"Chuck Close","life_date":"American, 1940–2021","image_copyright":"© Chuck Close, courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York","department":"Arts of the Americas","rights_type":"In Copyright","image_width":3204,"image_height":4114,"recent":0,"see_also":["19572"],"sort_number":"69   137","image":"valid","public_access":1,"curator_approved":1,"highlights":0,"Cache_Location":"001000\\700\\20\\1721","Primary_RenditionNumber":"mia_1004871.jpg","Rights_Image_Display":"Limited","list:highlights-of-the-contemporary-collection":true,"restricted":1,"related:audio-stops":[{"title":"Chuck Close, Frank","_id":"1721","objectId":"1721","link":"http://audio-tours.s3.amazonaws.com/p950.mp3","number":"950","type":"audio"}],"related:artstories":[{"title":"Frank","_id":"1721","objectId":"1721","description":"<p>Frank is deceiving. From afar, the portrait looks like a larger-than-life photograph, but up close you discover that it’s paint on canvas. In a sense, it’s both. Chuck Close transformed an 8x10-inch photograph of his friend, Frank James, into a painting by dividing the photo into a grid and copying each section onto the canvas on a much larger scale. He used only two tablespoons of diluted paint to cover the entire canvas, abandoning traditional brushes in favor of airbrushes, sponges, his fingers, razors, even an eraser fastened to an electric drill. The realistic finish, blemishes included, make Frank one detailed dude.</p>","link":"http://artstories.artsmia.org/#/o/1721","type":"artstory"}],"mtime":"2026-02-04T06:00:50.797Z"}