Robert Longo

Robert Longo is a painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. He arose out of the downtown art scene of New York in the 1980s and quickly became is an artist of international visibility. His work explores the significance of pictures and symbols in the popular culture as well as the alienation of the individual. This volume reveals his work as a thought-provoking commentary about his art and about the state of contemporary culture at large. Longo draws his subjects from the media--movies, television, magazines, and comic strips. He achieved critical acclaim the 1980s with "Men in the Cities," a dynamic series depicting modern businessmen in contorted positions, a commentary on contemporary afflictions and anxieties. His most recent work includes large-scale charcoal drawings of abstracted imagery, infused with an atmospheric sensation of light. In these, Longo is focused on the shifts of perception that an image can evoke and extend in relation to its environment.

Robert Longo was born in Brooklyn in 1953. He has had solo exhibitions across the world and is represented in several major museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Ludwig Museum in Cologne. He lives in New York. Caroline Smulders was Head of the Department of Contemporary Art at Christie’s for ten years before becoming Director of Gallerie Thaddaeus Ropac. Gilbert Perlein is the Director of the Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Nice, where he originated, among others, exhibitions on Yves Klein and Robert Rauschenberg.