Self-Portrait by Chuck Close (above)
Familiar Faces: Chuck Close in Ohio Collections demonstrates why Chuck Close is one of America's most important contemporary portraitists, capturing his subjects in exacting photo-realism by employing the grid method. His monumental portraits in a variety of media are fascinating to study in person. Across the room, the image melds together to depict the texture of skin, hair, etc. Up close, you may find the image is no more than a grid of painted circles, or of torn paper, or just made up of the artist's own thumbprint, varied perfectly to create a pixelized image of staggering accuracy.