Clinton is very seductive. When he looks directly into your eyes, he has an almost laser-beam-like lock-on thing that he does. He makes you feel like he’s really connected to you. And when he is photographed, he can transfer that into the lens. -Chuck Close

Close’s signature large-scale portrait heads are distinguished by their hyperrealism, an aesthetic fundamentally informed by the camera eye. Since the 1960s, the artist has used photographs as source material for his paintings, drawings, prints, and collages, a process that results in extraordinarily vivid likenesses. In 1977 he started exhibiting large-format Polaroid photographs as finished works, and Close has since also experimented with the daguerreotype, a nineteenth-century photographic process that captures a great density of pictorial detail. The psychological and pictorial intensity of Close’s portraits reference the intimate connection between the artist and his often larger-than-life sitters.