|
(1953 -
)
Where United
States culture, media, greed, and violence
meet, one finds the work of Robert Longo.
Longo's ground breaking series, "Men In The Cities", draws its
strength and inspiration from Longo's fascination with the works of many
artists in many media, but particularly from Hollywood's stylization of violence. His
figures are captured in mid-motion; one wonders whether they are dancing or
dying. Their creation and popularity have come to represent the high-speed,
high-pressure decade of the 1980's. Longo describes the subjects in this series
as "...doomed souls. They're people who built the buildings that would
eventually fall on them."
He views his work as abstract symbols, "...more like Japanese calligraphy,
or logos" . Longo works with assistants to create an image and, as an
artist, focuses on the communication in his images rather than the craft of
producing the image.
Asked about his influences, he names the "New York Post," the films
of Sam Peckinpah, modern artists such as Vito Acconci, Sol LeWitt, Robert
Smithson, Edward Hopper, and Egon Schiele, and further, Greek and Roman
sculpture.
Longo was born in New York City's Brooklyn and lives and works on the East Coast. He has
exhibited his thought-provoking drawings in New York,
Texas, Milan, Munich, Naples, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Paris and Tokyo, as well as
many other United States
galleries.
|
view artwork
