"Kaari Upson, California Artist of Desire and Disturbance, Dies at 51/Known for her resin sculptures and her disquieting videos, she was one of the most significant artists to emerge from the vibrant 21st-century Los Angeles art scene" (NYT). (Upson died of breast cancer.)
A contemporaneous artist obituary: "Chuck Close, Artist of Outsized Reality, Dies at 81/He found success with his large-scale Photorealist portraits, becoming one of the leading artists of his generation. Late in life he faced allegations of sexual harassment" (NYT):
In the 1970s, he began to translate his photographic sources into pixelated images, filling in the individual cells of a grid with distinct marks, colors and tones that would cohere into photographic images when viewed from a distance.... His pragmatic, problem-solving approach would serve Mr. Close well in the second half of his career. In New York, on Dec. 7, 1988, he was felled by what turned out to be a collapsed spinal artery, which initially left him paralyzed from the neck down. In the ensuing months of rehabilitation, he began to regain movement in his arms, and he was able to sit up and paint using brushes strapped to his hand. He not only returned to painting with unimpaired ambition but also began producing what many would view as the best work of his career.... Up close, the new paintings seemed to swarm with woozy, almost psychedelic energy, while from a distance the image would emerge in all its photographic exactness.
As for the allegations of sexual harassment, a doctor is quoted attributing his actions to Alzheimer's disease: "He was very disinhibited and did inappropriate things, which were part of his underlying medical condition. Frontotemporal dementia affects executive function. It’s like a patient having a lobotomy — it destroys that part of the brain that governs behavior and inhibits base instincts."
7 comments:
Don't know of the lady, but Chuck Close! I'll bet Althouse went to a few of his shows in her NY days. That era is closing out, isn't it? Philip Glass is 84 and still seems to be composing. Greatness of the '70s.
"He was very disinhibited and did inappropriate things, which were part of his underlying medical condition. Frontotemporal dementia affects executive function. It’s like a patient having a lobotomy — it destroys that part of the brain that governs behavior and inhibits base instincts."
I guess that explains Beiden.
Confession: I thought his portrait of Philip Glass was a self portrait until I saw it at the museum.
It’s at the Whitney. link text
The guy was paralyzed from the neck down and suffering from dementia. Cut him a break. How much of a threat is a senile paraplegic?
Philip Glass seems to me to have done some of his very best work after the age of 60.
I’ve seen Close’s art in museums. Striking work. But I don’t buy the Alzheimer’s defense on his behavior. If there was enough cognition to produce fine art, there was enough to know good from bad behavior.
For what it’s worth, I share a birthday with the late Ms. Upson, although in different years. She was born on the first Earth Day: April 22, 1970. That was also V.I. Lenin’s 100th birthday, probably not by coincidence. Many environmentalists at the time were watermelons: Green on the outside, red on the inside.
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