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"You know, the way art history is taught, often there's nothing that tells you why the painting is great. The description of a lousy painting and the description of a great painting will very much sound the same."
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"The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science."

"Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding."

"As useful as an unhappy artist. As useless as a happy philosopher."

"You do not need a boyfriend or a girlfriend to write an emotional poet, because poetry is beyond hooks and holes."

"To see things as the poet sees them I must share his consciousness and not attend to it; I must look where he looks and not turn round to face him; I must make of him not a spectacle but a pair of spectacles; in fine, as Professor Alexander would say, I must enjoy him and not contemplate him."
Explore more quotes by Chuck Close

"I did some pastels and I did other pieces in which there was just basically one color per square, and then they would get bigger and I could get 2 or 3 colors into the square, and ultimately I just started making oil paintings."

"Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience."

"I think most paintings are a record of the decisions that the artist made. I just perhaps make them a little clearer than some people have."

"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."

"Most people are good at too many things. And when you say someone is focused, more often than not what you actually mean is they're very narrow."

"I discovered about 150 dots is the minimum number of dots to make a specific recognizable person. You can make something that looks like a head, with fewer dots, but you won't be able to give much information about who it is."

"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."

"What difference does it make whether you're looking at a photograph or looking at a still life in front of you? You still have to look."
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