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Baylee Warner
Mrs. Fotu
Art 1010
30 November 2016

Contemporary Artists
Chuck Close is a contemporary artist. His full name is Charles Thomas Close, but prefers
to be called Chuck. He was born on the 5th of July 1940 in Monroe Washington. His father was
named Leslie Durward Close, and his mother was named Mildred Wagner. Chuck unfortunately
lost his father at the young age of 11. Near the time that his father died, his mother was
diagnosed with breast cancer and he became extremely sick from a kidney infection. Chuck also
suffers from dyslexia, and a disease that causes him to be blind to faces, he has a very difficult
time differentiating or recognizing faces at. He says it is because of this disease that he wanted to
start painting portraits in the first place.
Chuck was not super successful in school but excelled greatly in art. What he is most
known for is his super realistic large portraits of different people. Chuck studied at the University
of Washington, University of Seattle, and Yale. Later in Chucks life he got paralyzed. When he
did he went to physical therapy and got partial use of his limbs back but unfortunately still had to
use a wheelchair; but his disability did not prevent him from continuing his art work. He now
currently lives in Bridgehampton and Long Beach. He has two daughters with his ex-wife Leslie
Rose.

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Chucks style of art is very unique. He uses a technique that uses, pictures, huge
canvases, grid systems, and paint. But no one can deny that he makes very realistic beautiful
paintings, that make you feel at awe.
One question I would ask Chuck is why does he do his big portraits in the style that he
does? The answer I believe I would get from him is he does his portraits in the way that he does
is because it makes the faces look strange just like how he sees faces because of his disease.
Another question I would ask is if his disease preventing him from recognizing faces has
influenced his life. The answer I would get from him would be that his disease influenced him to
do the kind of art that he does now.

Another well contemporary artist is Steven Assael. Steven was born in New York City in
!957 and has lived in New York City his entire life. He currently teaches at the New York
Academy Graduate School, which is located in New York City. His work has been called
Post-Post Modern. Steven showed signs for his love of art at a very young age. He started
taking art classes at the age of four from the Museum of Modern Art. He paints his paintings

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from real life models that are in front of him and is known for his naturalism. All of his paintings
are very realistic and have a haunting look about them.
One question I would ask Steven is what influences the realism in his art? I think the
answer he would give me is that he wanted to show his viewers exactly what he saw. Another
question I would ask him is why is a lot of his art have a creepy/haunting look about it? The
answer I believe he would give me is that he got his inspiration from the city he grew up in. New
York City has a lot of haunting looking people around and they always intrigued him.

Alice Neel is another well known contemporary artist. She was born on the 28th of
January 1900, in Pennsylvania and died the 13th of October 1984. What she was best known for
were her oil paintings. In 1921 she enrolled in Philadelphia School of Design for Women which
is now currently called Moore College of Art and Design. She then later graduated from that
school in 1925. In 1924 she met another painter named Carlos Enriquez and they got married on
the 1st of June 1925, and went to go live with his family in Havana. Alice later had a child with
her husband and they lost their child before her first birthday. Alice was devastated and her art
became a little more demented after her lost. Later in her life, Alice divorced Carlos and started
painting nude portraits of females. She personally thought it was her most productive time in her

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whole life. Later when the woman who modeled for her got pregnant she started painting
pregnant nudes.
One question I would ask her is what influenced her the most in her art? I believe she
would tell me that the pain of her divorce influenced her art the most. Another question I would
ask her is why did she decide to paint female nudes? The answer she would give me is that she
wanted to empower women because she grew up in a time when women werent expected to do
much in their life.

Another contemporary artist is Sandy Skoglund. She was born on the 11th of September
1946 in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Sandy currently lives in New York City. She is most well
known for her photography, a lot of which deal with pets, but she also sculpts. She graduated
from Smith College in 1968, and also graduated in 1972 from University of Iowa. Sandy also
studied in France for a short period of time. Now Sandy teaches at Hartford and has been since
1973. One of her most well known pieces is Radioactive cats. Another well known one is The
Revenge of the Goldfish. (Which is shown below.)

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One question I would ask her is why does she take pictures? Why not paint? I think she
would say that she takes pictures because she can show what she wants to show her viewers
more easily with photographs rather than paintings. Another question I would ask her is why
does a lot of her works involve pets? The answer I believe I would receive is that she has always
loved animals since she was a young girl.

Matthew Ritchie is another contemporary artist that wanted to do something new and
cool. He decided to put artwork into architecture. Most architecture is very set because it has to
be strong and has to have certain specifications. So in his art he makes structurally sound and
also make it so that people think about what is going on. He was born in 1964 and is from Great
Britain. Matthew now lives in New York City. He went to school at Camberwell School of Art
and left or graduated in 1986. He originally was a painter but furthered his artistic field to
something bigger. In his process he draws out his blueprint and puts them into a computer and
translates them into a 3D shape. Thus making architecture look more like art.
One question I would ask him is what made him decide to move from painting to 3D
sculptures? The answer I expect to get from him is that he wanted to do something a little
different than what everyone else does in art. Another question I would ask Matthew is how does

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he get the designs for his sculptures? I think the answer I would get is that he just has fun and
just tweaks what he has to make it work for him.

Inigo Manglano-Ovalle said Art for me, doesnt reside in the object, it resides in what is
said about the object. Inigo was born in 1961 in Madrid, Spain, and now lives in Chicago. He
graduated from Williams College in 1983, and the Art Institute of Chicago in 1989. Inigo takes
seemingly ordinary objects and turns them into art.
One question I would ask Inigo is what gave him the inspiration to make ordinary things
into art? I think the answer he would give me is that he just always saw different little things as
art and so it wasnt difficult for others to see the same. Another question I would ask him is what
gave him the inspiration to do the kind of art that he does? The answer I expect I would get is
that he was sad that others didnt see small ordinary, everyday things as art and so he wanted to
show people what they were missing. He wanted to show them to slow down and appreciate the
things that are around them that they take for granted.

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The picture titled Emma that Chuck Close did is really great and cool to look at. It
looks like he took a picture of a little child and then pixelated it. But it is not pixelated like what
a crappy computer would look like, it still has a pretty clear quality to it. Instead of squares like a
normal pixelation, it is made out of diamond shapes and has a wow factor to it. You dont see art
quite like Chuck Closes everywhere. What some people may think is that Chuck would just
want to take ordinary faces and distort them to make them look more artistic. What Chuck was
really trying to display in his pieces was how he couldnt really remember faces for the life of
him. So by distorting his pictures the way that he did, it kind of shows how he saw faces. Yes
they are artistic, but it also shows one of the trials that he has to face on a daily basis.
This piece was made in 2002, and the picture of the little girl in the is actually of Chucks
daughter whose name is Georgia. A writer for the www.cs.washington.edu wrote about it saying,
Emma is a remarkable 113-color Japanese-style woodcut that Close produced in collaboration
with Japanese woodcut artist Yasu Shibata. Production of the Emma print took over eighteen
months to complete. So in this piece Chuck also had the help of a Japanese artist whose name is
Yasu Shibata.
Based on what I know about Chuck Close and his artwork, I know that he must paint the
way he does because of his disease that makes him unable to recognize faces. He just wanted to
express how he was feeling and maybe he even thought that painting faces would help him be
able to recognize them.
I believe that Chuck was very successful in this masterpiece. With all things considered
and you think of why he did what he did it makes you appreciate his art all of the more. This art
is significant to all of us humans, because we can sympathize with Chuck, because imagine how

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hard it would be to never be able to recognize anyone. Not even your most close love ones. It
would be hard to socialize normally without being able to connect exactly who is who all of the
time.
Now my perception of his work has changed. At first it was just a cool piece of
contemporary art that didnt mean much. Now that I have researched more about the artists
background and the pieces background it makes it so much more meaningful.

Sandy Skoglunds picture titled, Radioactive Cats is a very cool looking piece of art.
To make this piece she made plaster cats, and then painted them with glow in the dark, bright
green paint. And then set them in a completely gray room and then placed a man and a woman in
the room and then snapped a photo of it.
An author for the www.cbsnews.com wrote, Skoglunds 24 sculpted plaster cats covered
with day-glo paint represent nature adaption to a post-nuclear world by turning bright green; they
appear to have fared better than their human hosts. So the theme that Sandy was going for was a
post-nuclear/post-apocalyptic world where nature is changing and all of the animals that are
surviving and adapting are bright green, much like the nuclear waste around them. Thus you can

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assume that they too must have a little bit of a nuclear quality about them too. It is the survival of
the fittest in this world, and the fittest are bright green. But unlike the animals surrounding them
humans are not adapting as well to this new society and ecosystem. They seem to be worn down
and not doing as well as their cats.
What I personally think that Sandy was trying to say about this piece is that sometimes
humans can be too stubborn and that can be a bad things in some instances. With the animals it is
just survival of the fittest and they are willing to change in order to survive. But humans are not
as willing to change, even if their lives depend on it. So some might conclude that Sandy is
telling the human population to not be so stubborn and against change, and be go more with the
flow.
Its hard to be certain whose interpretation of the work is the most correct. There is just
so many different ways to view her work, but thats what I think Sandy meant to do.She wanted
to make a work that makes you think hard about what she was trying to display in this picture,
thus making it more personal. She wanted to have the viewers have their own interpretation of
what her art was thus making it more special to a variety of different people. Sandy wanted to
make the viewers to reflect on their lives and then think out what the picture meant. She didnt
want to give a flat out story of what the viewers should get out of her art, but by making it
abstract different people can get different things out of it. Not only that but the same people can
get different things out of different times in their lives. Making her art not only interesting to
look at but also very meaningful to many people. So I think that the work was successful in what
Sandy was trying to display.

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The theme in this art is so significant to human beings because, it can be whatever we
need it to be. The theme could be to stand out in the world, or to go more with the flow of things,
or whatever else people might need in their time. That is what it is such a unique and beautiful
piece because it is beautiful to everyone in a different way.
My viewing on this piece has changed since reviewing it. Based on what I know and
what the picture is about, it has a beautiful story about it. That story is everyones individual
story and how it can apply to so many different people on a whole. Thats why I think it is more
amazing than when I started.