Mr. Chuck Close and his fingers

Last week I went to the Reynolda House Museum in good ole Winson-Salem, North Carolina. Their featured gallery was American Impressions: Selections from the National Academy Museum, but the work that inspired and interested me most sat off in some dead end little room somewhere away from the regular path of the house. It seemed somehow forgotten. There wasn't even someone there to make sure we didn't rub our grubby little hands all over the art.

In this little semi-forgotten gallery hung the work of Mr. Chuck Close from his collection Keith: six drawings. Each of the used different techniques to paint the same face (which I imagine was some fellow named Keith). All were composed of pixelesque objects. One employed squares of paint, another used circles. Another used squares of graphite and another, squares of ink. Each of these four captured the basic outline of our friend Mr. Keith. Each could, I suppose, represent a different face of this fellow. But these four seemed incomplete, just an image of the man, not the full embodiment of him.

There was however one more version. This one used fingerprints. It held the detail of his eyes, the soul of the man. As if only a piece of the man could completely capture him. Only something human could find the humanity within the image. I personally find this terribly interesting. I like to think this speaks for all things. That at our most basic, if we look far enough in, we're made only of what we are, nothing we could make outside of that.