Drawing Although he studied sculpture, drawing remained Longo's favorite form of self-expression. However, the sculptural influence pervades his drawing technique, as Longo's "portraits" have a distinctive chiseled line that seems to give the drawings a three-dimensional quality. Longo uses graphite like clay, molding it to create images like the writhing, dancing figures in his seminal
Men in the Cities series. After enlarging the pictures through a projector, he and an artist assistant drew them in sizes ranging from three-quarter scale to larger than life-size. In the process, Longo often dramatized poses and always standardized attire into quite formal, black-and-white clothing. The idea for this work came, in 1975, from a still image in
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film
The American Soldier. About four years passed before Longo turned the vision of a man shot in the back into a monumental series of drawings. He produced about 60
Men in the Cities between 1979 and 1982. As a consequence, in his 30s, Longo was among the most widely publicized, exhibited and collected artists of the 1980s, along with the likes of
Cindy Sherman and
David Salle. Working on themes of power and authority, Longo produced a series of blackened
American flags (
Black Flags 1989–91) as well as oversized hand guns (
Bodyhammers 1993–95). From 1995 to 1996 he worked on his
Magellan project, 366 drawings (one per day) that formed an archive of the artist's life and surrounding cultural images.
Magellan was followed by 2002's
Freud Drawings, which reinterpreted
Edmund Engelman's famous documentary images of
Sigmund Freud's flat, moments before his flight from the
Nazis. In 2002 and 2004 he presented
Monsters,
Bernini-esque renderings of massive breaking waves and
The Sickness of Reason, baroque renderings of atomic bomb blasts. "Robert Longo: Monsters showed at
Metro Pictures in New York City from September 21-October 26, 2002.
Monsters was included in the 2004
Whitney Biennial. To create works such as
Barbara and Ralph, Longo projects photographs of his subjects onto paper and traces the figures in graphite, removing all details of the background. After he records the basic contours, his long-time illustrator, Diane Shea, works on the figure for about a week, filling in the details. Next, Longo goes back into the drawing, using graphite and charcoal to provide "all the cosmetic work". Longo continues to work on the drawing, making numerous adjustments until it is completed about a week later. In March 2013,
The Lexander Magazine reviewed Longo's 1982–83
diptych entitled
Pressure, highlighting it as the "penultimate visual
anthem of the era," expanding upon Neal Benezra's 1988 analysis of the work as having been "the most representative work of art of the 1980s." The artist's
Engines of State series (made between 2012 and 2019) was given to and exhibited by the
National Gallery of Art in 2023 by
Clifford Ross.
Music videos In the 1980s, Longo directed several music videos, including
New Order's "
Bizarre Love Triangle",
Megadeth's "
Peace Sells" and "
The One I Love" by
R.E.M. He is responsible for the front covers of
Glenn Branca's
The Ascension from 1981 and
The Replacements' 1985 album
Tim. Film and television In 1992, Longo directed an episode of
Tales from the Crypt entitled "This'll Kill Ya". He also directed the
cyberpunk film
Johnny Mnemonic, starring
Keanu Reeves,
Dolph Lundgren and
Takeshi Kitano, and a short film named
Arena Brains. At the time, Longo was quoted as saying, "making a painting is one thing, but making a film kicks your ass." During the late 1980s and early 1990s Longo developed a number of performance art theatre pieces, such as
Marble Fog and
Killing Angels, collaborating with Stuart Argabright, the guitarist
Chuck Hammer and
Douglas Sloan.
Music Longo was the leader and guitarist of a musical act called ''Robert Longo's Menthol Wars
, which performed no wave experimental music in New York rock clubs in the late 1970s, such as Tier 3. Members of the band included Richard Prince and David Linton. Menthol Wars'' also was part of a series of three staple-bound paperback books by Richard Prince published during 1980 by
Printed Matter, Inc. During the same period, Longo also performed with
Rhys Chatham in Chatham's
Guitar Trio and produced a series of slowly fading slides entitled
Pictures for Music which was projected behind the musicians.
Photography Commissioned by Italian luxury label
Bottega Veneta, Longo photographed models Terron Wood and Alla K for the brand's fall/winter 2010 advertisements, evoking memories of the dancing silhouettes of his
Men in the Cities series. ==Exhibitions==