Does anyone have ideas for a research question in art?

Focus on his "process and collaboration". For example, "Can art be expressed through process and collaboration?" (yes!):

http://www.chuckclose.coe.uh.edu/

I just had an idea. Perhaps, you can read this excellent essay by Christopher Whitcombe and then assess how Close's art "fits in" to Whitcombe's concept of "art for art's sake".

http://witcombe.sbc.edu/modernism/artsake.html

Maybe something about how modern art impacted society and shaped the future of art in the U.S. You could fit Chuck Close into that paper, and there is quite a lot of resources on modern art.

How was Chuck Close's use of hyper-realism as a style related to his continuing interest in artistic abstraction