Photorealist painter and printer Chuck Close died yesterday at the age of 81. One of the most prominent of the photorealistic painters of the late 60s and early 70s, Close painted immense, highly detailed canvas portraits from photos he would take of himself, his friends and acquaintances, such as Philip Glass. This career of portraiture has been ascribed to his having face blindness. A restless experimenter in techniques, before the end of the 70s he had exhibited work done in rubber stamps, silk tapestry, airbrush, mezzotint, and other media — his website has a fascinating illustrated timeline of this range.
In the late 1980s, he suffered a seizure that left him paralyzed from the neck down and requiring physical assistance for the rest of his life. He resumed painting with a brush strapped to one hand. Before the seizure he had already been experimenting with more painterly, less precise techniques (such as Lucas (1986-87)), and afterwards he continued exploring with looser, more pixilated paintings and prints, as well as working in media such as daguerotype.
In the 2000s he was accused multiple times of sexual harassment (archive.org copy). He did not deny many of the incidents and publicly apologized for his behavior, and circumstances led to the cancelling of at least one major exhibition.