America Is Hard to See

May 1–Sept 27, 2015

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Although long considered the most important modern art form, painting fell out of fashion in the contemporary art world of the late 1960s. Regarded by many as outmoded, even dying, the medium was challenged, on the one hand, by the forceful presence and novel processes of Minimal and Post-Minimal sculpture and, on the other, by Conceptual art’s emphasis on language and photography. Yet it was precisely painting’s diminished status that made it ripe for reinvention—a space to play not only with paint itself but also with critical taboos like figuration and bad taste.

The paintings on view in this chapter represent a variety of experimental approaches to the medium from the late 1960s through the 1970s. Some, such as Robert Reed’s and Jack Whitten’s canvases, involve almost sculptural processes, such as pouring, smearing, and layering, while Elizabeth Murray’s painting toys with eccentric graphic forms and jarring high-key colors. Having abandoned his Abstract Expressionist style for cartoonish symbols in the late 1960s, Philip Guston paved the way for younger artists reengaging the figure within psychologically charged tableaus. Several of them appeared under the mantle of New Image Painting, a provocative 1978 Whitney exhibition that included the work of Neil Jenney and Susan Rothenberg. These artists rejected both abstraction and the smoothly rendered images of Pop in order to pursue oblique imagined narratives—whether comic or foreboding—within loosely painted fields. The freedom they espoused in their handwork, symbolism, and humor revivified a medium that some left for dead and continues to inspire younger generations of painters today.

Below is a selection of works from this chapter.

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Chuck Close, Phil, 1969

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Narrator: Chuck Close has used the photograph this painting is based on many times over the years. It is of the artist’s friend, Philip Glass. But the painting, from 1969, was his first portrait of Glass, who later became one of America’s best-known composers.

Philip Glass: My reaction to the picture? I never really think of me as the picture, in fact it’s always just been an image, I don’t feel attached to it at all. Though other people might say, there’s Phil, but I never say that. I don’t think, when Monet was doing haystacks, the haystacks thought, hey I’m the haystack, it’s just another haystack [LAUGHS].I don’t think it was a portrait in the sense that when Rembrandt did a portrait or when Van Gogh did a portrait those portraits were partly to reveal some character of the person, the portraits were about the person. If these are portraits at all and I don’t think they are they’re not about revealing the portrait of the person they’re about revealing the artist.

Narrator: To hear Glass describe sitting for the photograph that Close used to make the painting, please tap the button to continue.

Chuck Close made his inaugural series of works–eight large-scale, black and white paintings of faces—between 1968 and 1970. In this and other early “heads” (as the artist calls them), Close sets each frontally-depicted face against a neutral ground.

Phil is a portrait of Close’s long-time friend, composer Philip Glass. Despite his intimate relationship with the subject of the painting, Close created this work in a calculated, systematic manner. The artist took an 8 × 10-inch photograph of the sitter, overlaid it with a penciled grid, and then painted a vastly enlarged blowup of each square onto the canvas using airbrushes to create a photographic finish. As a result of this drastic enlargement, we see Glass at an uncomfortably close distance from which every mole, hair, and wrinkle is visible. With its cool, almost clinical detachment from its subject, the work functions more like a giant mug shot than a portrait.

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America Is Hard to See

Threat and Sanctuary

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CHUCK CLOSE (B. 1940), PHIL, 1969

Chuck Close, Phil, 1969

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection

On the Hour

America Is Hard to See

Threat and Sanctuary

13

CHUCK CLOSE (B. 1940), PHIL, 1969

Chuck Close, Phil, 1969

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection