Best Selling Books by Chuck Close

For the past 30 years, American artist Chuck Close (b. 1940) has concentrated on essentially one subject: the human face. This volume, the most comprehensive assessment of Close''s work yet published, includes portraits of Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Alex Katz, Lucas Samaras, and others. It accompanies a mid-career retrospective opening at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in February 1998. 178 illustrations, 113 in color.

Contains transcripts of conversations between artist Chuck Close and twenty-seven of his fellow artists who were also subjects of his paintings.

This sumptuous volume presents the first full-scale exploration of warhol''s tremendous influence across the generations of artists that have succeeded him. Warhol brought to the art world a unique awareness of the relationship that art might have with popular consumer culture and tabloid news, with celebrity, and with sexuality. Each of these themes is explored through visual dialogues between warhol and some sixty artists, among them John Baldessari, Vija Celmins, Gilbert & George, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Damien Hirst, Alfredo Jaar, Deborah Kass, Alex Katz, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Glenn Ligon, Robert Mapplethorpe, Vik Muniz, Takashi Murakami, Bruce Nauman, Cady Noland, Elizabeth Peyton, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, Gerhard Richter, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman and Luc Tuymans. These juxtapositions not only demonstrate warhol''s overt influence but also suggest how artists have either worked in parallel modes or developed his model in dynamic new directions. Featuring commentary by many of the world''s leading contemporary artists, as well as a major essay by the celebrated critic Mark Rosenthal and an extensive illustrated chronology, Regarding Warhol is an out-standing publication that will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in contemporary art.

"Vija Celmin''s drawings and paintings evoke the infinite, as the artist attentively examines subjects like a night sky filled with distant stars or a rocky expanse of the moon''s surface. An interview with Chuck Close reveals Celmin''s ongoing interest in drawing and her love of nature as a place of discovery."

Chuck Close--a man who describes himself as "an artist looking for trouble"--has for three decades consistently but variously challenged the accepted boundaries of the printmaking tradition. Published to accompany a retrospective of his prints opening at Blaffer Gallery and traveling to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and several additional museums around the country, this is the first comprehensive survey of Close''s revolutionary prints. Featuring exquisite reproductions of the prints together with essays on Close''s career and in-depth interviews with the artist and his master printmakers, the volume blends words and images to give readers unique insight into the creative process. The text highlights the intensely collaborative nature of Close''s project and looks into the challenges posed by the unprecedented huge scale he prefers. Close may labor on a single print for as long as two years, working out aesthetic problems that might involve the retrieval of a centuries-old European method on one day and the creation of an entirely new technique (such as applying sunscreen to block light) the next. "Prints have moved me in my unique work more than anything else has," Close says. "Prints change the way I think about things." From the artist''s ambitious first mezzotint to his recent pulp-paper multiples, this book chronicles the genius of Chuck Close in the medium in which he has done his most exciting work. Taken together, these prints constitute a remarkable self-portrait of the creative drive, vision, and intellect of one of America''s most important living artists. EXHIBITION SCHEDULE Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston September 13-November 23, 2003 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York January 13-April 18, 2004 Miami Art Museum, Florida May 14-August 22, 2004 Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee October 29, 2004-March 27, 2005 Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina April 16-August 7, 2005 Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts September 6-December 4, 2005 Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas April 16-June 28, 2006 Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Madison, Wisconsin July 29 - October 6, 2006 Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA January 28-April 20, 2007 Boise Art Museum, Idaho May 12-August 11, 2007 Portland Art Museum, Oregon September-December 2007