William J. Clinton

Bill Clinton by Chuck Close, 2006, oil on canvas, nine feet tall by seven feet wide.

In this large-scale portrait of Bill Clinton, two things stand out. The first is its size, given that the artist Chuck Close only shows Clinton’s head and shoulders. This means that his face alone is several feet high, making it about the same size as some of the full-length, life-size portraits in the “America’s Presidents” exhibition. Second, while the work is based on a photograph, it is far more abstract than a typical headshot. Similar to pixels on a screen, the painting is composed of hundreds of color-filled diamonds. As a result, this portrait of the forty-second president remains a puzzle-like abstraction, even though it alludes to a realistic photograph.

Let’s explore the mosaic-like composition. When we are near the portrait, Clinton’s likeness takes a back seat to Close’s technique. Close made a grid on both the original photograph and the canvas. He then used the grid as a guideline to enlarge the photograph, transferring and transforming the visual information from each segment to the canvas. Since diagonal lines form the grid instead of horizontals and verticals, the painting is made up of diamonds instead of squares. While each diamond is roughly two and a half by two and a half inches, some of them are joined together to form larger rectangles and L-shapes.

Close then filled these geometric fields with a series of loosely painted, multi-colored concentric circles, teardrops, or rectangles. They resemble nesting blocks of different colors and shapes. At the center of the composition, Close used unexpectedly bright hues to form the oval of Clinton’s face and hair. On the left side of the canvas, where the light hits the president’s face, the diamond tiles are filled with pale aqua, peach, and sage green. The mid-tones of his full cheeks and rounded chin are made up of tangerine, yellow ochre, olive green, eggplant, violet, and even crimson. Along his bulbous nose and underneath his chin, evergreen, eggplant, and burnt sienna represent darker shadows.

Within this warm palette, the blue of the irises of Clinton’s eyes stands out. Rings of turquoise, green, and aqua surround the black circles of his pupils. Each iris fills one of the diamonds. In this way, the eyes form the basic unit of composition and scale.

Now that we have examined the technique, let’s move back several feet. From our new vantage point, it becomes apparent that the variations in the grid suggest specific facial features. For example, there is a pale yellow and baby blue shape resembling a kidney bean about a third of the way up the center of the composition. From afar, it coalesces into the president’s sparkling white front teeth, which he reveals through parted, smiling lips.

Furthermore, colors that appear bright and bold up close seem more subdued at a distance. The background of peacock blue, evergreen, raspberry, and greenish gold becomes a dark blue-gray that complements Clinton’s warm tan complexion.

Even from the far end of the spacious gallery, which is several yards back, the painting does not read as a crisp image. Instead, it is almost as if we are viewing Clinton through textured glass.

The portrait label reads as follows:

William J. Clinton, born 1946
Forty-second president, 1993–2001

The first baby-boomer president, Bill Clinton came to national attention when, at age thirty-two, he emerged as one of the leading reform governors of the Democratic Party. During his presidency, he and his administration played a crucial part in curbing the massive federal spending deficits that had soared in the 1980s, even achieving a surplus in revenues for the first time since the 1960s.

Clinton established new organizations for free trade, including NAFTA, which eliminated tariffs and trade barriers between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. His other accomplishments included welfare reform and a successful U.S.-led NATO intervention in the Balkans. Proposals such as universal health care, however, failed.

Clinton’s denial of his sexual relationship with a White House intern, while under oath, led to his impeachment, but he was not convicted in the Senate trial. Despite the scandal, Clinton was successful in making the Democratic Party more centrist and better equipped to compete with Republicans.

Chuck Close begins all of his paintings with a photograph of his subject, in this case an image made during a photo session in August 2005 for a New York magazine cover. He then draws a grid on both the canvas and the photograph and uses the information contained in the photograph to create a series of abstract modules on the canvas.

The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges that, in 2017, several women accused Chuck Close of sexual harassment, though no charges were brought against him. The museum recognizes the positive and negative impacts that individuals represented in our collections have had on history.

Chuck Close (born 1940)
Oil on canvas, 2006
Lent by Ian and Annette Cumming