Chuck Close, artist of monumental grids, dies at 81

By DEEPTI HAJELA
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Chuck Close, a painter, photographer and printmaker best known for his monumental grid portraits and photo-based paintings of family and famous friends, has died at age 81. His attorney says Close died Thursday at a hospital in Oceanside, New York. No cause of death was announced. Nearly all of Close’s works used a grid structure for the representation of an image, which he said helped him break the face down into “incremental units.” Time consuming and labor intensive, he produced a plethora of paintings that dissect the human face of such luminaries as President Bill Clinton and composer Philip Glass.