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Robert LongoRobert Longo Men In The Cities record art 1981 (vintage Robert Longo)1981
1981
About the Item
Robert Longo Men In The Cities album cover art:
A rare highly sought-after 1981 record art cover featuring original artwork by Robert Longo on behalf of musician Glenn Branca. A classic Robert Longo Men In The Cities collectible that makes for stand-out wall art.
Medium: Offset Lithograph on vinyl record cover. 1981.
Dimensions: 12 x 12 inches.
Condition: good to very good overall vintage condition; minor aging & shelf-wear.
Includes original vinyl record (very good vintage condition).
Unsigned from an edition of unknown; Robert Longo illustration artwork credit featured on the reverse.
Robert Longo Record Art: further history:
“In 1976, Branca moved to New York from Boston. He met artist Jeffrey Lohn soon after relocating and, with him, formed the band Theoretical Girls. The group broke up in 1981, the same year Branca’s seminal album, The Ascension, was released. Robert Longo’s art graced the cover, and several musicians, including Ned Sublette and Lee Ranaldo (of Sonic Youth), contributed to its making. In 1982, Branca started his own label, Neutral Records, and released several of Sonic Youth’s earliest albums.” (Art Forum 2018)
About the artist:
Robert Longo burst onto the New York art scene as a bold 25-year-old with “Men in the Cities,” his iconic 1983 large-scale charcoal drawings of businessmen presented in striking contortions. “I always imagine that I want to make art that is going to kill you,” he said in 1984. “Whether it’s going to do it visually or physically, I’ll take either way.” Longo works and reworks his charcoal into thick-textured surfaces, giving his velvety drawings deep, blackened expanses and sharply contrasting whites; his forms are at once representational and softly elusive. Having been fascinated with popular culture as a child, Longo centers his practice on transposing images and the resulting transformation of meaning, linking him with the Pictures Generation. “An artist should know art history,” he says. “Shock value only lasts so long.” His recent works have included series depicting women in burkas, ocean waves, nuclear explosions, impressions of Freud’s apartment, and caged zoo animals. (American, b. 1953, Brooklyn, NY)
Related Categories
Cindy Sherman. New York Artists. Pop Art. Photorealism.
Contemporary Art. Contemporary Figurative. Black-and-White Photography. Pop Culture. 20th Century Art. Robert Longo Men in the Cities.
- Creator:Robert Longo (1953, American)
- Creation Year:1981
- Dimensions:Height: 12 in (30.48 cm)Width: 12 in (30.48 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:NEW YORK, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU35437685972
Robert Longo
The drawings by artist Robert Longo are a sensory experience: They are monumental, detailed and hard-hitting in their subject matter, which often includes critiques of power, social unrest and consumer capitalism.
Longo has spent his career exploring mediums as varied as the Photorealistic charcoal drawings for which he is best known and film direction. In all of his work, however, he draws inspiration from his deep background in sculpture. “I always think that drawing is a sculptural process. I always feel like I’m carving the image out rather than painting the image. I’m carving it out with erasers and tools like that,” he once said.
The Long Island, New York, native attended high school with a man who was shot at Kent State University while protesting the U.S. invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War in 1970, and the famous image of this man lying dead on the ground influenced Longo so deeply that he began to consider all art political. Longo attended Buffalo State College, where he met and became friends with artist Cindy Sherman, and later the two moved to New York City together.
Longo’s revered work includes his charcoal and graphite “Men in the Cities” drawings. The Photorealist series, which debuted at Metro Pictures gallery in Manhattan in 1981, depicted people in formal business clothing. Posing in suspended animation in unusual contortions, the figures take on a choreographic quality and represent the career-minded “yuppies” of the era.
“Men in the Cities” was inspired by punk rock music and decades later has been cited as a visual reference for the opening sequence of the popular television drama Mad Men. The work was among the most recognizable and iconic of the Pictures Generation — the movement by artists who came of age in the 1970s and were disillusioned by the social and political conditions of the time. In 2014, Longo created 12 charcoal drawings for a series titled “Gang of Cosmos,” which were black-and-white depictions of famous Abstract Expressionist works by artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Lee Krasner.
Through his provocative, detailed and highly precise prints, drawings, photography and sculpture, Longo continues to challenge traditional sources of power and authority.
Find original Robert Longo art on 1stDibs.
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