NEW YORK—Always a highly visible artist, Chuck Close is currently benefiting from an enormous amount of public attention. He has two major solo shows on tour: Chuck Close: Self Portraits 1967- 2005 recently opened at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta; and Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration runs from April 9 through June 25, 2006 at the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

In November, Harry N. Abrams Inc. published Close Reading : Chuck Close and the Artist Portrait by Martin Friedman, and on April 24, he will appear in Robert Storrs Artists Visions series at the 92nd Street Y in New York. He recently spoke to ArtInfo, discussing the nature of his portraits.

Chuck, can we start by thinking about the whole question of portraiture as a viable way of making art in the early 21st century?

Well, Im a human being and I take pictures of people and I make paintings about them. These are images that matter to me. I dont do commissioned portraits, and I dont paint people that Im not close to.

The portrait has traditionally been seen as a carrier of human content, but people have sometimes talked about your attempts to drain expression from the faces of your sitters, particularly when youre taking the Polaroids that you work from.

I dont try to drain all expression out, I just want a very neutral expression. If you have an extreme expressioneither laughing or crying or whateverthen thats the only content that you will get out of it. Whereas if its 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 dont like to editorialize it.

Sol LeWitt has suggested that its in your self-portraits that theres the most psychological insight. What would you say to that?

As far as my own images go, I am the last person to know whether they are more psychologically loaded than the others. They only differ in the fact that I am posing for myself rather than someone else posing for me. And I use the word posing deliberately. Its a relatively carefully constructed view of myself. I presented myself one way in 1968 and I present myself another way now.

In the self-portrait show thats traveling around just now, theres one image of me smiling. People were amazed: Oh my God, he actually smiles! Anyone who knows me knows that I smile all the time and that I laugh all the time; Ive just never chosen to make a painting like that. But I dont think the fact that I havent done so means anything in particular. I certainly dont think that Im such a serious person that I have to present myself that way. Im just doing the same thing for my own image that I do for other peoples, which is to present it without much editorial comment.

As youve said, your models are always people that you know.

Yes, other artists, family and friends.

Ive always been struck by the portraits that youve done of Alex Katz.

Alex is a hero of mine because in my opinion he makes truly modernist, intelligent and forward-looking portraiture. And we agree on the question of why anybody would make a portrait painting at this stage in the history of art. I dont think either of us are interested in breathing new life into 19th-century notions of portraiture. I think were interested in making paintings. The paintings happen to be portraits. First and foremost were both making paintings; thats the most important thing.

And in your paintings, theres a lot going on that isnt about portraiture at all.

Well, Philip Glass said something that I thought was wonderful. He said that he is my haystacks! What he meant was that he is to me what haystacks were to Monet or, I would add, what bottles were to Morandi.

Are Monets paintings truly about haystacks? Are Morandis paintings truly about bottles? I dont know. Theyre paintings first, and the subject matter is there and you know something about it, but clearly its not essential that you have a meaningful relationship with a haystack or a bottle. I think those paintings of Morandis are about isolation and loneliness. Theyre bleak. He uses bottles as a stand-in for humankind. But he does it without drawing big circles around it. He doesnt make it into an editorial position.