The subject matter is typical of Chuck Close: a large, frontal view of a person's head. The technique of the piece reflects Close's later style, where the painting is divided into a diagonal grid in which each square contains an assortment of painted geometric shapes, ranging widely in colors, many of which, curiously enough, are not even normally found on the human face (green, violet, blue, etc.). However, when observed from a distance, the many separate squares and the varying shapes and colors within them seem to merge together to form a complete, convincing human face. The individual conflicting colors disappear and, oddly enough, the familiar pigments and features of the human face are readily visible. Like most of his portraits, Chuck Close shows his subject from a close, disorienting vantagepoint. Robert Rauschenberg's grinni

Stylistically, Seurat and Close's paintings harmonize to the same artistic melody. Seurat's time-consuming technique of "pointillism" (also referred to as "divisionism") was employed in order to create purer, richer, more vibrant colors in his paintings. According to the physics of light, primary colors can be combined to form secondary colors (blue + yellow = green, for example). However, the same principles do not relate to pigments of paint, which are not the pure essences of colors they appear to be (blue and yellow paint do not make as vibrant a green as one might assume they would). Seurat attempted to overcome this limitation by using unmixed, pure colors in La Grande Jatte. Instead of mixing two colors and then applying them to the canvas, he applied the pure colors onto the canvas as tiny dots in close proximity to one another, trusting that the two colors would form their intended offspring when viewed from a distance of a few feet. This technique yielded partial success; the dots of paint are still visible, but the colors are indeed bright and lively.

The face in Robert was not painted in the typical way most artist would paint a face - that is, namely, by painting specific details like the shape of the head, the eyes, the nose, mouth, etc. Instead, the canvas was divided into thousands of squares, each mere inches across. Close paints a background color for each square from top to bottom, ranging from deep reds and blues to light yellows and greens. He then starts again at the top, painting in each square an array of loose shapes like squares, circles, diamonds, lozenges, etc., in the same range of vivid colors. When the long process is complete, a realistic-looking, vibrant face looks back at the viewer from the canvas. Close is not actually painting the parts of a face, but simply small areas of colors on a vast surface. Standing inches away from the canvas, it is impossible to discern any of the details that seem so obvious from a few feet away.

And much like the Impressionists of the previous century, Chuck Close seems to have a certain fascination with how light and color interact (across human flesh, in particular), and how these interactions can be represented with pigments of paint. La Grande Jatte and Robert both represent the respective artists' attention to detail concerning the fickle characteristics of how light plays across the surface of the subject matter. Specific areas of the left sides of Robert Rauschenberg's face show an obvious source of light; areas of shadows on the opposite further confirm this. Likewise, all the shadows in Seurat's painting have a common orientation, and we can easily tell where the sun would be within the piece. Indeed, if Chuck Close had painted Robert an hour later or earlier than he did, then it would no doubt look substantially different (actually, the fact that Close has captured such a specific moment in relation to lighting is a direct cause of the fact that the painting was based from a photograph; instead of painting rapidly to "capture the moment" in the manner that the Impressionists often did, he used the camera to automatically record the intricacies of light).

To look upon a Chuck Close painting is to fully understand that the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts. There is an unmistakable grandness to Close's portraits - not only in their

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