Artist Research - Chuck Close

Chuck Close is an american painter and photographer and he was made famous by his photorealist work. Close seems to focus more on portraits, the majority of his work is face on portraits done from the shoulder up. He also goes for a different style of picture like the one below. the image seems to be made up of tiny squares or rectangles this isnt immediately obvious, the image just seems a bit distorted but when you look closely you can see the detail that is put into it.

Artist Research - Arnulf Rainer

In his early years Rainer was influenced by surrealism, his work then evolved towards Destruction of Forms, with blackenings, overpaintings, and maskings of illustrations and photographs dominating his later work.
These pictures represent his destruction of forms work and this is made very obvious through the art. The colours he uses are mainly dull, like black white and greys, but he seems to add a slight bit of colour, although usually mainly red and yellow.

He seems to distort the face slightly as well. The impression i get from his work is not an alter ego, but some  kind of anger, as if he is letting the anger out on his paintings. This makes me wonder if these people mean something to him, maybe they are people he doesnt like or people that have done wrong, or just symbols of these people. Also from looking at his work, it seems that he only did these paintings of men, and it makes me wonder what this means, if it is something he did on purpose.