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When his monumental close-ups of human faces appeared in the late 1960s.

As Big Bird creates his self-portrait, he mimics Close's unique style of painting.Ĭhristopher Finch, who has written three popular books on Jim Henson's work including Of Muppets and Men and Jim Henson: The Works, has written a 2007 book about Close's artwork, Chuck Close: Work. Chuck Closes paintings are studies in both patience and the limits of seeing. In The Integrity of Joseph Chambers, Clayne Crawford plays a middle-class insurance salesman who wakes up, shaves his mustache into something from the Chuck Norris/Burt Reynolds catalog of. Big Bird notes that the blues he goes through remind him of his friends Cookie Monster and Grover, and asks to have some paints himself. Then he chooses the right brush for the job, and finally, mixes paints to get the right color. In a black-and-white rendering that makes him seem as big as Mount Rushmore and just as implacable, the artist looks down at us, his chin unshaved and hair dishevelled, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Because he's disabled, he uses a special machine to maneuver his canvas into the right position. Close’s first self-portrait, of 196768, was a stunning achievement of verisimilitude, and also a major, minimalism-be-damned kiss-off. ( First: Episode 3962)Ī third segment features Close taking Big Bird through the steps he goes through in order to get ready to paint. In another segment, he shows Big Bird his daughter Emma's favorite painting, a portrait of her. In one segment, one of Close's self-portraits is analyzed by a group of kids in voice over as the camera pans out from the painting. Chuck Close (1940 - 2021) was an American artist of contemporary portraiture famous for his photorealistic paintings of a number of modern-day artists, sculptors and writers, including composer Philip Glass.Ĭlose recorded several segments in 2001 for Sesame Street Season 32, talking to Big Bird about making art.