Phil / Fingerprint

Close drew this larger than life-size portrait of American avant-garde composer Philip Glass directly on a lithographic stone using the impressions of his own fingers that had been inked with lithographic tusche, a dense, greasy black liquid normally applied with a brush. As was his practice, Close worked directly from a photograph of his subject, using a grid to systematically arrange the image on the stone. The resulting portrait is both a compelling depiction of his friend Glass at age 44 and a spatial and temporal record of the artist's own hand.