Akron Art Museum
photo by Richman Haire
Akron, OH / 330-376-9185
Chuck Close's "Linda" Returns to the Akron Art Museum
One of the most popular works in the museum's collection, Linda,
has returned home to the Akron Art Museum. Linda was on loan to The Museum
of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York as part of a major exhibition devoted to
the work of American artist Chuck Close. The painting traveled from MoMA
to The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture
Garden in Washington, D.C., the Seattle Art Museum and The Hayward Gallery
in London. (left: Linda, 1976-78, acrylic and pencil on canvas,
108 x 84 inches, Akron Museum, purchased with funds from an anonymous contribution,
an anonymous contribution in honor of Ruth C. Roush, and the museum acquisition
fund)
Since its acquisition in 1982, Chuck Close's Linda has been a dominant presence in the museum's galleries. Linda, a major example of Photo-Realism, has also been exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; St. Louis Art Museum; The Whitney Museum of American Art; the Guggenheim Museum and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Linda has been reproduced in numerous national and international periodicals, including The New York Times and Time Magazine.
Close first came to prominence in the 1970s with his immense portraits based on passport-style photographs. Often associated with Photo-Realism, his portraits are created through a highly disciplined manner, which uses grids of small, modular units that are painted in thousands of minute increments with an airbrush. He has radically transformed the concept of portraiture through his intense exploration of the human face.
Read more about Chuck Close in Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Acquires Chuck Close and Other Works (6/21/99) and Chuck Close (10/28/98).
Read more about the Akron Art Museum in Resource Library Magazine.
rev. 11/22/10
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