157 Quotes by Chuck Close

Neurologically, I'm a quadriplegic, so virtually everything about my work has been driven by my learning disabilities, which are quite severe, and my lack of facial recognition, which I'm sure is what drove me to paint portraits in the first place.

I have always attempted to create images that deliver the maximum amount of information about the subject.

I wanted to translate from one flat surface to another.In fact, my learning disabilities controlled a lot of things. I don't recognize faces, so I'm sure it's what drove me to portraits in the first place.

Inspiration is for amateurs - the rest of us just show up and get to work. And the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will - through work - bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never have dreamt of if you were just sitting around looking for a great ‘art idea.’

Part of the joy of looking at art is getting in sync in some ways with the decision-making process that the artist used and the record that's embedded in the work.

It doesn't upset artists to find out that artists used lenses or mirrors or other aids, but it certainly does upset the art historians.

It always amazes me that just when I think there's nothing left to do in photography and that all permutations and possibilities have been exhausted, someone comes along and puts the medium to new use, and makes it his or her own, yanks it out of this kind of amateur status, and makes it as profound and as moving and as formally interesting as any other medium.

The thing that interests me about photography, and why it's different from all other media, is that it's the only medium in which there is even the possibility of an accidental masterpiece.

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you.If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens.But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction.