Close up on celebrated New York portraitist Chuck Close. By JACOB POWELL.

AN ICON in the art world, New York photorealist portrait painter Chuck Close has a bold idiosyncratic style that demands your attention in a way that few modern portrait painters can. Since the 60s Close has owned this often unpopular sector of the painting scene defying both critic and peer to try and write-off his work as mere bland ‘mechanical’ reproduction. And yet this is essentially what he has based his career upon – reproducing painted images from large scale photographic portraits. Take a look at a selection of his works and you’ll soon understand why he has remained a vital fixture in art exhibitions, galleries, museums and literature for the past four decades.

Documentaries such as Marion Cajori’s Chuck Close, with such a specific subject, usually draw their audience primarily from among those familiar with that person/place/topic rather than from the general film going populace. And in this particular case that is a good thing; it is when the filmmaker and her camera hone in on the artist and his work that the film really shines.

Focusing on the face and head, the artist’s oversized portraits (typically over two metres in height) are stunning to look at from afar but, as Majori highlights through the various talking heads in her film, it is the painstaking process and the evidence of it which make Close’s paintings transcendent works. The director does an excellent job of bringing a smart selection of these evolving works to the fore across the length of the documentary. These visual treats, alongside interviews with the subjects of each painting – for the most part Close’s artist friends, including such luminaries as Robert Rauschenberg, Philip Glass, Alex Katz, and Kiki Smith – are woven around the central narrative thread of the artist creating a new self-portrait, the documentarian directly highlighting Close’s creative process.

The majority of the artists interviewed are articulate and informative subjects who don’t merely extol the talents of their friend but give their personal perspectives on Chuck’s work and context as well as explaining what it is like to be exposed as a model in his work. A couple even show something of distaste for his chosen creative arena (figurative portraiture) even though they cannot but admit the confrontational and contemplative nature of his portraits. Close himself is more down to earth than I had expected. In many ways he seems conservative for a celebrated artist. Although there is definitely a slightly surreal air to him there is none of the pretence you might associate with some ‘big name’ artists. Watching him work is quite something; making a lengthy, possibly mundane process, come alive with possibility. At one stage, when asked how he can see combinations of colours that look like a mishmash up close as combining into a cohesive image from afar he offhandedly likens the process to that of a musician that can write music without hearing it: they just know how it will sounds from being familiar with the notation.

Unfortunately, outside of the compelling interest of the documentary subject, Chuck Close as a film falls flat. Majori’s off-camera interview style is fine but the material is stitched together in a made-for-television way, as if it would have been better suited as a two-part miniseries. The filmmaker does do a reasonable job framing Close’s works, though more often than not beginning with a close up detail shot and slowly zooming out to show the image as a whole – reminiscent of Jennifer Baichwal’s technique in her 2006’s documentary Manufactured Landscapes. Except in this case the opposite would better have suited Majori’s narrative purpose as the main point made by many of the interviewees is that, although his portraits have a dramatic impact as overall images the meat of Close’s work is to be found in the details.

Chuck Close may not be a master work of cinema but it does give the viewer the opportunity to see a master at work. I would encourage anyone with even a passing interest in painting to try and catch a screening if only for this reason.