Go See – Chuck Close @ BLUM & POE now on view thru 12. 22.11

Chuck Close is showing new work at the Blum & Poe gallery in Los Angeles, marking his first solo show at the gallery and first major exhibition in Los Angeles after almost two decades. The showcase debuts small-scale oil portraits of musician Paul Simon, art patron Agnes Gund, and artists Zhang Huan and Laurie Anderson.

Close’s emphasis on portraiture and introspection spans his 50-year career. On an art historical level, Close is both a departure from and an exploration of Post-Clement Greenberg abstract expressionism, drawing on photo-realism and representational portraiture as well as modes of aesthetic design to evolve his trademark introspection. Also exhibiting more experimental work in this exhibition, Close uses a variety of printmaking techniques, most recently that of Belgian Jacquard tapestries. His range of media includes Polaroids or Daguerreotypes, pen and pencil, conté crayon, pastel, watercolor, finger painting, and stamp-pad ink on paper.

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Go See - Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool, Paintings 1964-2007 at The Santa Monica Musuem of Art

Santa Monica Museum of Art

Now Through August 22

The renowned artist’s first career retrospective highlights his paintings from 1964 to 2007. While Hendricks has worked in a variety of media throughout his career, and has explored diverse subject matter, he is best known for his striking and provocative life-sized portraits of everyday African-American people from the urban northeast. Bringing to mind American realism, pop culture, and post-modernism in a way uniquely his own, Hendricks’ pioneering contributions to African-American portraiture and conceptualism claims a compelling space somewhere between portraitists Chuck Close and Alex Katz, and African-American conceptualists David Hammons and Adrian Piper. At times cool, at times confrontational, sometimes sexually charged, and always empowering, the work reveals the artist’s keen eye for his subject’s attire, attitude, style, and point of view. Hendricks' groundbreaking body of work has both influenced and paved the way for many of today's generation of artists.

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