Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-npj9w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-08T14:57:04.906Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The digital catalogue raisonné: When form is function

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Carina Evangelista
Carina Evangelista*
Affiliation:
Chuck Close Catalogue Raisonné Artifex Press, 109 West 21th Street, New York, NY 10001, USA
*
Email: cevangelista@artifexpress.com

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the 'Save PDF' action button.

A catalogue raisonné is the definitive, comprehensive, and annotated compilation of all the known works of an artist. Beyond the necessary, meticulous task of compilation of information, which typically takes years to complete, the need to keep the information updated is a perpetual concern. Because the lives of artworks continually evolve as ownership changes and exhibition and literature histories expand, publishing a catalogue raisonné in print presents a real challenge in keeping information current. This challenge is even more pronounced for active, living artists whose works completed subsequent to a published catalogue raisonné would require the publication of a new volume. A catalogue raisonné being ‘definitive’ actually evolves constandy, warranting a format that can accommodate that very flux. The Chuck Close catalogue raisonné, launched and maintained as an online publication, is used here to illustrate the advantages of digital publishing for catalogues raisonnés.

References

1. Lyons, Lisa, ‘Changing Faces: A Close Chronology,’ Close Portraits (New York: Rizzoli, 1987), 34.Google Scholar
2. Obrist, Hans Ulrich and Jones, Julia Peyton, ‘I’ve always felt that inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work: A Conversation with Chuck Close,’ Paradis 6 (June 2012): 198.Google Scholar
3. Kesten, Joanne, ed., The Portraits Speak: Chuck Close in Conversation with 21 of His Subjects (New York: A.R.T. Press, 1997), 219.Google Scholar
4. Glass, Philip, ‘I’m Just a Haystack,’ in Paparoni, Demetrio, Daguerreotypes (Milan: Alberico Cetti Serbelloni Editore and Gabrius S.p.A., 2002), 6.Google Scholar
5. Finch, Christopher, Chuck Close: Life (Munich: Prestel, 2010), 186.Google Scholar
6. Kesten, Joanne, ed. The Portraits Speak: Chuck Close in Conversation with 21 of His Subjects (New York: A.R.T. Press, 1997), 317.Google Scholar
7. Friedman, Martin, Close Reading: Chuck Close and the Artist Portrait (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2005), 72–73.Google Scholar
8. Levin, Kim, ‘Chuck Close: Decoding the Image,’ Arts Magazine (June 1978): 146, 147.Google Scholar