Chuck Close

Monroe, WA (American, b. 1940)
I don’t try to drain all expression out, I just want a very neutral expression. If you have an extreme expression—either laughing or crying or whatever—then that’s the only content that you will get out of it. Whereas if it’s presented neutrally and flat-footedly, you can read whatever evidence is embedded in their visage, like laugh-lines and furrows or whatever, in the same way that you can make assumptions about people when you meet them at a cocktail party. I am a humanist and I hope that a bit of humanity is in there somewhere; I just don’t like to editorialize it.

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