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I think the problem with the arts in America is how unimportant it seems to be in our educational system.

Chuck Close

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Chuck Close
Age: 81 †
Born: 1940
Born: July 5
Died: 2021
Died: August 19
Drawer
Graphic Artist
Painter
Photographer
Monroe
Washington
Charles Thomas Close
Charles Close
Chuck Close (1940-2021)
Charles Close (1940-2021)
Seems
America
Unimportant
Arts
Problem
Educational
Think
Photographer
Thinking
Photography
System
Art

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I can't always reach the image in my mind... almost never, in fact... so that the abstract image I create is not quite there, but it gets to the point where I can leave it.
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What difference does it make whether you're looking at a photograph or looking at a still life in front of you? You still have to look.
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I did some pastels and I did other pieces in which there was just basically one color per square, and then they would get bigger and I could get 2 or 3 colors into the square, and ultimately I just started making oil paintings.
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There's something Zen-like about the way I work - it's like raking gravel in a Zen Buddhist garden.
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Ease is the enemy of the artist. When things get too easy, you're in trouble.
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When you come up in the art world, whatevers in the air, the issues of the moment, end up becoming part of the working method or modus operandi of how you think about doing a painting. And I came up at a time when-actually painting was dead when I came up. Sculpture sort of ruled.
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Like any corporation, I have the benefit of the brainpower of everyone who is working for me. It all ends up being my work, the corporate me, but everyone extends ideas and comes up with suggestions.
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Most people are good at too many things. And when you say someone is focused, more often than not what you actually mean is they're very narrow.
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At the same time that I'm finding the color world I want, I'm also trying to make the imagery, you know, by the nature of the strokes themselves.
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I don't believe in inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. Some of the time you know you're cooking, and the rest of the time, you just do it.
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All the best ideas come out of the process they come out of the work itself.
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Losing my father at a tender age was extremely important in being able to accept what happened to me later when I became a quadriplegic.
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Those who are waiting for an epiphany to strike may wait forever. The artist simply goes to work, making art, both good and not so good.
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Of all the artists who emerged in the '80s, I think perhaps Cindy Sherman is the most important.
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Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process they come out of the work itself.
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It's always a pleasure to talk about someone else's work.
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It's like a magic well. You think you know everything about [a] photograph, you think you've gotten everything out of it, and all of a sudden I see things in it I'd never seen before.
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Art saved my life in two ways. It made me feel special, because I could do things my friends couldn't, but it also gave me a way to demonstrate to my teacher that, despite the fact that I couldn't write a paper or do math, I was paying attention.
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All the fingerprint paintings are done without a grid.
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The reason I don't like realist, photorealist, neorealist, or whatever, is that I am as interested in the artificial as I am in the real.
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