Viewing Room | Chuck Close. Lucas / Mosaic, 2019

"I made a series of works that I called 'Professional Posers' – Lucas Samaras, Alex Katz, Francesco Clemente... people whose images are well known to us because they constantly use self-portraits in their work. And always successfully.

 

Lucas is unstoppable – he has an incredibly intense gaze, which he holds for just a fraction of a second before his face seems to completely disappear. He knew exactly how he wanted to see himself in my works."

– Chuck Close

Chuck Close’s approach to mosaic captures the spirit of his photographic realism, while transforming it through the tactile, fragmented nature of the medium. The structured grid of his usual style gives way to a surface that blends abstraction with photorealism, resulting in a powerful, monumental work. The small pieces of smalti mosaic glass, used to recreate the Portrait of Lucas Samaras, revive the tradition of golden tesserae and semiprecious stones—materials once chosen to inspire awe in medieval art.

The artist’s mosaic work pays homage to the traditions of ancient Byzantium and echoes the legacy of historic art—from Greek panels and Pompeian mosaic floors to early Byzantine and Renaissance smalt mosaics, such as those in Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The tiny fragments of green glass and cobalt-blue smalt used in the piece evoke the ancient practice of adorning sacred relics with golden mosaics and semiprecious stones, inspiring a sense of reverence for their beauty and craftsmanship.

"I'm not a big fan of the Byzantine mosaics. It's a big passion of mine."

– Chuck Close

Much like Byzantine art, which favored stylization over naturalism, Close’s mosaic portraits shift fluidly from hyperrealism to abstraction, creating a rich dialogue between historical tradition and contemporary vision.

This dialogue between sacred tradition and contemporary portraiture resonates in the work of Jack Whitten and Edvard Munch. Like Chuck Close, both artists employ fragmentation, geometry, and symbolism to bridge inner experience with universal form. Whitten, inspired by the spiritual aesthetics of Byzantine mosaics, fused their visual logic with the language of digital imagery—using hand-cut tiles of dried acrylic as “pieces of light,” encoding the image directly into the process. His mosaic-like compositions reflect Close’s pixelated portraits, where individual marks accumulate into a unified, meditative whole. Similarly, Munch’s The Sun (1909) channels intense energy through structure: its radiant, symmetrical solar disc dominates the composition, symbolizing revelation and natural force. This visual architecture finds a clear echo in Lucas, where the magnified human gaze takes on an almost sacred intensity, evoking the strength and profound inner power.

"At any rate, if you know Lucas Samaras, he would be Svengali if you give him a chance, and mind control, you know those old horror films with the "dnn dnn dnn dnn dnn," where concentric circles are radiating out of someone's head? I thought it would be particularly appropriate for Lucas to have them emanate from his third eye, even though I don't believe any of that stuff, because that's what he would do."

– Chuck Close

Lucas I, 1986–87. Oil and graphite on canvas, by Chuck Close © The Metropolitan Museum of Art