Chuck Close reinvented portraiture almost four decades ago with a series of nine-foot-tall, black-and-white likenesses of himself and fellow artists, which astonished an art world dominated by minimalism and conceptualism. Close has since explored the possibilities implicit in his original breakthrough in an array of mediums. This lavish, large-format volume is the first to deal with all aspects of Closes career and to place them in a biographical context. (...)