Film Festival 09 - Chuck Close
Chuck Close
USA 2007, 116m
Director: Marion Cajori
This portrait of the great New York portraitist, he of the giant
photorealist heads, is an exemplary artist documentary. It covers
Close's personal and professional history in a relaxed but thorough
manner without stinting on documenting his fascinating artistic
process. Over the course of the film (several months in real time),
we follow Close as he works amiably through a colossal
self-portrait, humming along to old jazz and as he methodically
decorates the mass of tiny squares that make up the vast canvas.
The film regularly darts off to fill in, in a parallel way, the
different squares that make up his life, drafting in fellow 70s art
darlings Robert Rauschenberg, Philip Glass and Kiki Smith, along
with friends and family. Close's inquisitive, avuncular personality
makes him the real star of the show, however. The sight of him
perched in his wheelchair (he has been largely paralysed for the
last 20 years), merrily plugging away at a work of such magnitude
and beauty, is one of the most inspirational images of the
Festival.
