Unconventional artist

• By ROBIN MILLER
• arts writer
• Published: Jan 4, 2009 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Trendy has probably never been a part of Chuck Close’s vocabulary.

Of course, he’s not around to dispute or defend this statement; neither is his artwork as Ida Kohlmeyer’s work continues to reign in the Louisiana Art & Science Museum’s upstairs and downstairs galleries.

She, too, was an unconventional sort, so it’s safe to say Close’s work should feel at home when it moves into her spot on Jan. 17.
That’s when the museum opens the exhibit of his portraits, A Couple of Ways of Doing Something: Photographs by Chuck Close, Poems by Bob Holman. Again, the artwork has yet to arrive.

So Elizabeth Weinstein relies on a catalog from a previous showing of this exhibition to tell the story, which works because she has a way of bringing artistic stories to life.

It’s her job, after all, as museum curator. And she’ll be arranging Close’s work in the museum’s galleries to tell the story of the second phase of his life.

That’s not an official title, second phase. It’s simply fact, for Close’s life changed in 1988. He was 48 years old, and his career was at its pinnacle. But then nothing in life is ever certain.

Close was the presenter at an awards ceremony when he fell ill. He immediately checked in at a hospital across the road and was diagnosed with anterior spinal artery syndrome. That’s a fancy way of saying Close had suffered from a blood clot, one that damaged his spinal cord and left him paralyzed from the waist down.

“And that’s really the amazing story about Chuck Close,” Weinstein said. “He had a choice between giving up or struggling to move forward with sheer determination and will power to give to his art.”

Close chose the latter, weathering months of physical therapy to regain arm movement.

“And if you look at these photographs,” Weinstein said, turning pages of a book written on Close and his work, “you’ll see that the paint brushes have to be fixed to his hands. He had to re-learn his art, and he had to start painting in a new way.”

But the pieces in the museum’s upcoming show aren’t paintings at all.

“No, this is another phase of his work,” Weinstein said. “These are photographs, portraits of artists. They started out in daguerreotypes, then he used the daguerreotypes for the other work in this show. So, the title, A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, is very appropriate for this show.”

Now, portraits are nothing new to Close’s work. It is, in fact, his specialty. His love, in fact. He’s credited with radically changing the definition of modern portraiture.