Robert Longo’s Epic Vision Still Shapes How We See the World

“Epic.” That’s the word Robert Longo reaches for when requested to explain his large charcoal drawings. Phrases by no means got here simply to him, Longo advised me. As a baby with dyslexia, he relied on photos: movies like The Ten Commandments or Spartacus; publications like Life Journal and Nationwide Geographic. “Films, tv, magazines: I realized to learn footage. I perceive footage.”

That intuition—to deal with photos as language—outlined a profession that spans practically each nook of visible tradition. Longo emerged within the late Seventies as a number one determine within the Pictures Generation alongside David Salle and his ex-girlfriend-turned-lifelong-friend Cindy Sherman. His breakthrough collection (of “epic” charcoal drawings) “Males within the Cities,” made between 1977 and 1983, grew to become an emblem of postmodern nervousness. He has directed a Hollywood characteristic, made music movies for R.E.M. and New Order, and mounted museum and gallery exhibitions at a very powerful venues worldwide. At this time, he’s thought-about one of the crucial influential artists of his technology, a determine who strikes restlessly between media, making daring statements in regards to the present second all of the whereas.

I met Longo on the highest ground of a Nineteenth-century brick constructing in SoHo, a multi-room studio he’s occupied since 1984 (as soon as a shared house with late video artist Gretchen Bender). The area is huge and worn-in, and it nods to the touchstones of Longo’s life. Simply contained in the door cling posters for 2 “epic ” movies: Paul Schrader’s Mishima and Longo’s personal cyberpunk caper Johnny Mnemonic. Above his sink, there’s a framed T-shirt printed with Lynda Benglis’s 1974 Artforum ad.

In the principle room cling the three monumental charcoal drawings that he was engaged on: two dueling jets (one American, one Russian) and a half-finished close-up of a Components 1 crash. “A automobile crash is an actual magnificence,” Longo stated, his signature all-black outfit dusted with charcoal and his palms coated in darkish smudges like a mechanic’s.

Spectacle has all the time been Longo’s topic as a lot as his medium. At 72, he’s reflecting on his profession at the same time as he pushes ahead. Within the final yr, he mounted two retrospectives: one on the Albertina Museum in Vienna (which traveled to the Louisiana Museum in Denmark), one other on the Milwaukee Art Museum, “The Acceleration of Historical past.” Now, he’s presenting one among his most bold gallery exhibits but. This month, Pace Gallery devotes its whole West twenty fifth Road flagship to his latest work in “The Weight of Hope,” spanning 4 flooring and filling the area with 26 giant drawings, three movies, three sculptures, and 33 charcoal drawings on paper. The gallery’s façade will probably be coated with a vinyl of the First Modification.

Longo has all the time made political artwork, fueled by his perception that artwork has social energy. In 1985, Longo advised the New York Times: “I feel my artwork goes to alter the world.” Once I requested him about this, he responded: “I acquired a lot shit from that, however it was like, ‘why not?’”

This brash confidence has pushed Longo all through his profession. When he directed Johnny Mnemonic in 1995, a cyberpunk thriller written by sci-fi legend William Gibson, Longo needed Keanu Reeves to play the principle half. When Reeves’s publicist refused to attach them, Longo advised me, “A buddy of mine threw [the script] over the fence to Keanu’s home, and he learn it.” Equally, Longo needed to shoot the movie in black and white, however the studio refused. Many years later, he painstakingly recut each scene to match his authentic plan. He needed to leak it on-line till pals warned him off, however in 2022, his most well-liked model was lastly launched. With out fail, Longo stayed true to his imaginative and prescient.

The movie’s dystopian story—a world ravaged by a tech-induced plague and dominated by companies—stays a mirror of his worldview. “I grew up with the concept that know-how will save us,” he stated. Now, he sees its affect extra as a pressure that retains us hooked in a relentless doomscroll.

Longo channels the each day barrage of photos into his drawings, which body picutres we might often encounter on social media, making us really feel their weight somewhat than scroll previous their affect. Or as he put it: “The actual fact is that we, as artists, have the prospect to inform the reality…So in that sense, I’m attempting to make a present that’s politically charged.” In his eyes, his job as an artist is very similar to a journalist’s: to report and platform what’s occurring on the planet.

On the identical time, what he’s reaching for, he advised me, is one thing tougher to pin down: “hope,” because the title of his new present suggests. His drawings from the previous couple of a long time deal with scenes the place magnificence and violence collide, from warzones to pure disasters, all rendered in greyscale with meticulous element.

“The world is de facto fucked up proper now,” he stated, “however I’ve to imagine I’ve some hope…I learn this quote by Saint Augustine, the place he stated hope has two daughters. One is rage, which I clearly have a number of. The opposite one is braveness. So, you must be pissed off on the approach issues are, and you must have the braveness to alter them. If that’s what hope is, I’ve acquired a number of it.”

Within the Tempo present, a lot of this rage takes type within the choice of large-scale charcoal works that he refers to because the “world on hearth.” These charcoal drawings are based mostly on documentary photos that confront political and environmental collapse. Certainly one of his haunting charcoal drawings, Untitled (The Three Graces; Donetsk, Ukraine; March 14, 2022) (2022), originated from a information {photograph} of three attire within the shattered window of a store in Donbas, Ukraine.

“It was the mom, the bride, and the bridesmaid,” defined Longo. “These clowns glided by with heavy machine weapons and blasted the fucking glass…This drawing was made out of such rage on the stupidity of those individuals.”

Within the floor ground gallery, the namesake triptych The Weight of Hope (Battle, Faith, Nature) (2025) anchors your entire present. The work contains three monumental 8-by-12-foot drawings: a soldier manning a howitzer in Ukraine; a mass of pilgrims circling the mosque in Mecca, seen from above; and firefighters struggling to comprise a 2024 blaze in Gorman, California. Every of the panels displays on a major theme that dominates worldwide politics and conversations.

On the seventh ground, Longo turns to video, that includes three movies that play in succession. One, Icarus Rising (2019), exhibits Longo tearing up pictures culled from mainstream media, from conflict refugees escaping on boats to Black Lives Matter protestors in Minneapolis. “There’s a sluggish movement of ripping aside all of the supply photos, however the sound is just like the Earth shaking,” he stated, as he performed me a piece of the video.