Chuck Close Nudes

Just saw a fine show of them at Pace on 25th, maybe.  I don't like these galleries with multiple Chelsea locations.  It's hard to keep the Paces and the Gagosians and the Zwirners straight, just to name a few.

It's important to remember that Chuck Close, wheelchair-bound for what many mistakenly think has been his full career, was once fully mobile.  And painted things like this ...

Which is something, regardless.  But when you figure in that it's maybe 10 feet by 30 ... well then it's just really something.  It's called Big Nude and has -- surprisingly, since it's a pretty iconic Close image -- never been exhibited in New York.

If you are in New York City I would urge you to proceed to this show with dispatch.  It closes on the 29th.

Back to Big Nude:  I will never have, in my entire life, enough money to buy Big Nude.  Or, for that matter, a building with a wall large enough to display the thing.  And I'm content with that.  But there are some fun daguerrotypes in the show that probably go for ten or twenty grand, and those have a very high giggle factor.

I'm not suggesting I'm going to buy one.  But I'm suggesting that I go through periods of time when that would be a possible thing to do with twenty grand and is certainly worth thinking about.  I mean, they're certainly more interesting than a stack of hundreds.  Also, it helps if you look at this at a bit of an angle.