<p>I’ve seen Close’s paintings before. I know what your talking about. The nature of his later paintings changes depending on your distance from them. They become abstract (not necessarily “abstract” stylistically) paintings at point blank range and become this kind of abstracted coded pattern of colors. It’s like looking at the DNA of a picture. At a great distance they optically blend to become a highly convincing representational image. However, in either case the work still refers to and is thoroughly grounded by the concepts of CMYK printing, photographic technology, and the way the human eye processes the former two. I’d be interested to know how his work can be classified outside of representation when it seems he thoroughly embraces it in his process of building these pictures.</p>
<p>“Also Timkerdes re: the gallery question. Perhaps you misunderstood, I wasn’t making a value judgment necessarily between the gallerys/armory show. Just saying that they are world’s apart in focus, intent, and so different in concept that I’m not sure comparing them even makes any sense.”</p>
<p>I’m not sure I get what your saying. I’ve been saying that representational painting represents a niche in the art world in terms of sales. That was my original claim, more or less, in response to the notion that representational skills play a large factor in financial success. Then I listed the largest galleries/shows/fairs to show a lack of presence of representational painting in the venues which commaned the largest sales. As a claim, what I’m saying is no different than saying that art-house theaters represents a financial niche in generated revenue from film making. If I showed you the revenue of mainstream movie theaters and compared that to the revenue generated by art-house theaters, would you say that it’s senseless to compare the two financially because they differ in focus, intent, and concept? Of course it’s true that they differ in these ways, but would it really matter if we are only talking about revenue?</p>