Quotes from Chuck Close

Painting is the frozen evidence of a performance.

All the fingerprint paintings are done without a grid.

In my art, I deconstruct and then I reconstruct, so visual perception is one of my primary interests.

Sculpture occupies real space like we do... you walk around it and relate to it almost as another person or another object.

I don't care about the Guggenheim. The Guggenheim isn't involved in anything that I am interested in. I don't care about motorcycles and Armani suits.

No one was more surprised than me when my paintings started selling, except maybe my dealer.

I think I was driven to paint portraits to commit images of friends and family to memory. I have face blindness, and once a face is flattened out, I can remember it better.

A photograph doesn't gain weight or lose weight, or change from being happy to being sad. It's frozen. You can use it, then recycle it.

You don't have to have a great art idea - just get to work and something will happen. So that's pretty much my modus operandi and pretty much my principal position, such as it is.

You know, the way art history is taught, often there's nothing that tells you why the painting is great. The description of a lousy painting and the description of a great painting will very much sound the same.

The first thing I do is take Polaroids of the sitter - 10 or 12 color Polaroids and eight or 10 black-and whites.

Any artist who goes to Las Vegas is an idiot as far as I am concerned. Whoever goes to Las Vegas can stay in Las Vegas.

Losing my father at a tender age was extremely important in being able to accept what happened to me later when I became a quadriplegic.

What difference does it make whether you're looking at a photograph or looking at a still life in front of you? You still have to look.

I'm plagued with indecision in my life. I can't figure out what to order in a restaurant.

I knew from the age of five what I wanted to do. The one thing I could do was draw. I couldn't draw that much better than some of the other kids, but I cared more and I wanted it badly.

The reason I don't like realist, photorealist, neorealist, or whatever, is that I am as interested in the artificial as I am in the real.

Women in general interest me. I like how women are more liable to talk about real things, personal things.

I have a great deal of difficulty recognizing faces, especially if I haven't - if I've just met somebody, it's hopeless.

If the bottom dropped out of the market and the artist was not going to sell anything, he or she will keep working, and the dealer will keep trying to find some way to convince somebody to buy this stuff.

I don't believe in inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. Some of the time you know you're cooking, and the rest of the time, you just do it.

I build a painting by putting little marks together-some look like hot dogs, some like doughnuts.

I have no intention of flattering people. I like wrinkles and crow's feet and flaws, and somebody should know, if I'm going to photograph them, that's going to show up, you know?

I don't work with inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work.