August 21, 2021

"'The Larry Project,' neurotic and tender by turns, evolved into a much more emotional, all-encompassing undertaking — in which the absent Larry, whom Ms. Upson never met..."

"... expanded into the artist’s muse, her lover, her persecutor and, ultimately, her doppelgänger. By the end, no clean distinction was left between artist and subject; the two had become doubles. One drawing in the Hammer Museum show bore the words 'I am more he than he is.' The project ended in 2011 with a performance at a Los Angeles gallery at which she dragged a charcoal-and-wax mannequin of Larry on the walls and floor inside a plywood cube until the effigy disintegrated, symbolically turning Larry’s body into dust."

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:

Kai Akker said...

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.

Josephbleau said...

"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.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

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

William said...

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?

Yancey Ward said...

Philip Glass seems to me to have done some of his very best work after the age of 60.

charis said...

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.

Clyde said...

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.