Robert Longo

Cotthem Gallery, Barcelona
Private Collection, Belgium

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: Examined in the frame, this work is in very good condition. There is very light undulation to the bottom edge of the sheet and there are two very faint spots of discolouration to the right of the signature.
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Spanning the two decades during which Robert Longo has explored a wide range of media from painting and sculpture to film and photography, the following three lots bear witness to the artist's affirmation: "I believe in the power of art."

Born in Brooklyn in 1953 and raised in Long Island, Longo developed an early interest in the low-art under-culture of the mass media, fuelling his acute visual hunger through movies, television, magazines, and comic books. After enrolling at the University of Texas, he left to study sculpture under Leonda Finke. Although drawing remained his preferred method of self-expression, Finke's influence can be perceived in the strong tonal contrasts and chiseled lines that give his 'Men in the City' and 'Bodyhammer' drawings their distinctly three dimensional quality.

Longo moved to New York in the 1970s where he immersed himself in the city's underground artistic scene. It was not until the early 1980s when he found critical acclaim for his 'Men in the Cities' series. Executed in 1983, lot 165 Study for Cindy is one of the most important and iconic images from that groundbreaking series. Depicting Longo's contemporary and friend, the artist Cindy Sherman, writhing in a contorted, extreme physical and emotional state, this image introduces themes of conflicting passion and power that have endured and evolved in Longo's subsequent artistic investigations. The celebrated black and white drawings in this series were based on a series of photographs that Longo took of friends on the rooftops of Manhattan, ducking out of the way of projectiles being thrown at them by him. The resulting drawings he produced of starkly profiled figures framed against a clean white background, posses a mesmerizing ambiguity. The weightless, distorted poses of the figures, suggestive of convulsions or the throes some tribal dance, is set in direct contrast to the smart work-suits they wear. The juxtaposition of untamed human instinct with the civilized, conservative outfits, creates a visceral as well as visual tension; one that encourages a broader examination of mankind's animalistic nature beneath the polished façade of civilization.

The physical passions and aesthetic dualities that prevailed in Longo's 'Men in the City' can also be seen in the series of 'Bodyhammers' he made in 1993. Depicting guns in monumental black and white charcoal drawings, these images are antagonistic, confrontational and highly sensual images that assault the eye with their monumentality and beauty. The inspiration and title for the series derived from a 1992 Japanese science-fiction / horror film, in which a Japanese office worker (played by cult actor Tomorowo Taguchi) finds his body transforming into a weapon through sheer rage after his son is kidnapped by a violent gang. Exposing Longo's mature master hand as a draughtsman, the infinite subtle varieties in tone here lend the enlarged machine-gun a decidedly romantic and soothing atmosphere - the exact opposite of what one might expect. Unlike the actual nature of the subject portrayed, Longo's drawing of the Bodyhammer (lot 164) whispers in silent testimony. Floating like a space-craft amidst an impenetrable white sea of paper, the lustrous metal surfaces of the gun glisten in a moment of serene beauty. Like his recent series of roiling atomic mushroom clouds and Tsunami, in spite of its disturbing and violent subject, the Bodyhammer entices the viewer with its seductive appearance. The dichotomy between the arresting visual poetry of the gun's enlarged iconic form, versus its gang-land violent reality, realises an acutely felt visual tension that is endemic to Longo's best work.

Omnipresent also in both these works is a residual sense of primal fear. However, rather than confronting the instinctual, animalistic fears with which we are genetically programmed for natural survival, he taps into the vulnerable underbelly of the psychological predatory fears that we create ourselves. The enlarged 'Superheroes' of comic book action-figures photographed by Longo in 1998 embody this too. These monumental photographs of plastic toys explore the idea that contemporary urban society feeds a subconscious need to scare ourselves and enliven our dormant survival instincts. Since being hunted or eaten alive by a wild thing is no longer likely in the civilized world, we fill that void by creating imaginary life-threatening experiences in media related forms; forms that we enjoy being terrified from the safety of our armchairs... or for that matter an art gallery.

The predatory nature of our own psyches and the primal fears that fuel them are some of the channels from which Longo derives his imagery.  "Inspiration for the work always comes from the world," he explains. "I don't find images, they find me. It just happens." Photographs, whether his own or those that 'find him,' are the primary references in his work, and the subsequent evolution of the image is a fascinating and challenging experience for Longo. "Drawing from photos is a way of reclaiming the images that haunt us," states Longo. "By drawing them, I make them become not just something I am looking at but something that becomes part of me, every molecule of my being... Art is not so much about emotions but more about experience... "It's like when a photograph develops. I'm so fascinated with the image that I find myself orchestrating elements within the picture, amplifying them or decreasing them, customizing them, like in the tradition of Caravaggio. I'm not concerned with keeping true to the original. The original gives me the ground to work with." (the artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, Madrid, Galeria Soledad Lorenzo, Robert Longo, Lust of the Eye, 2003)