Milwaukee Art Museum opens the "Robert Longo: The Acceleration of History" exhibition with nearly 40 works by the Brooklyn-born artist, including monumental drawings, sculptures and video created in the last decade, on Friday, Oct. 25.
The show, which runs through Feb. 23 in the Baker/Rowland Galleries, was curated by MAM's Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Margaret Andera, and features some colossal and hard-hitting works.
The bulk of the show is given over to huge charcoal works on paper mounted on aluminum backing, framed and behind Plexiglass. These, according to Andera, were all created over the course of the past decade, which was a fertile period for Longo and the curator says there were a lot more works that didn't make it into this exhibition.
And that's pretty astonishing considering the massive scale of the drawings and the amount of work that goes into each one. Some took a year or more, even with Longo's team of assistants.
The MAM show is Longo's first solo exhibition in the Midwest in more than 30 years.
"He had been doing a lot of hyper-realistic images of flags and waves and sharks and all these kind of powerful emblems," says Andera, "but in 2014, with this drawing of the police line (at a protest over the killing by police of 18-year-old Michael Brown) in Ferguson, Missouri, there was something that in my opinion changed his approach.
"It kind of recontextualized his work for me using media images in a much more direct way, and there's an urgency behind some of these images. From 2014 through today you'll see some of these works that are direct responses to global events."
The exhibition has both these kinds of work – responses to events, emblematic works (a flag, a bald eagle), drawings referencing great works in art history and even natural subjects like a snowstorm in a forest and an iceberg scene – and they all have an extremely realistic look, resembling black and white photographs, despite the fact that they're done with charcoal.
But, says Longo, please don't call them "photo-realistic."
"What I do is I make these things kind more hyper-real," he says, standing in front of the untitled Ferguson drawing, noting that it's not a copy of a photograph but rather a sort of mash-up of multiple photos.
"Nothing is real," says Longo, prompting Andera to add, "It’s all fake. He’s always playing with the truth."
"I'm trying to draw the atmosphere of a picture," Longo continues, "and thing is that the paper that I use has just enough grain to evoke almost a photographic quality. It's very subtle grain, you can see it's just enough. I feel like I'm trying to reclaim photography back to human vision because on one hand they're based on upon photographs, but at the same time, it's how we see; our memory."
Though he says he always hated charcoal, he went to his studio one day, feeling inspired, and all he had on hand was charcoal.
On one hand Longo also laments the need for the Plexiglass, but he sees an upside, too.
"If you could see these without Plexiglass, the texture is like velvet," he says. "It's unfortunate we can't do that. But at the same time, I really dig the reflection (of one work in the Plexiglass of another).
"Because the sizes (of the works) are all the same it’s a bit like scrolling through Instagram. Which I really like."
Also serving to reflect other works is a glossy cube scultpure in the middle of the gallery that houses the Ferguson drawing. Not only does its reflections tie together the works in the room but if we get close enough, it reflects us, too and reminds us we're part of what's going on in these images.
The intricacy of the works is amazing to behold. Some of them have an almost impressionistic quality in that seen from a distance they could be mistaken for photographs but up close they lose that detail.
A drawing of a Robert E. Lee statue that's been wrapped in plastic is like this. One depicting a crash at a NASCAR race almost looks pixelated when you get up close.
Others, however, are remarkably detailed, like the Ferguson drawing, which even with your nose nearly touching the Plexiglass (please don't actually touch), the detail is jaw-dropping.
Another sculpture, which almost made me gasp at its striking beauty when I turned the corner into the gallery later had me regretting thinking it lovely.
It's an orb with nearly 50,000 identical bullets projecting from it, each one representing a gun death during the year it was made.
Longo's work, in case you haven't guessed, may be subtle in its artistic execution – an erase mark here, a paper grain there, gentle rubbing of charcoal here – but it is anything but in its execution, and there's no better time to look closely at images like these.
There are other sculptures, too, and a small nook showing a video of his on repeat, hinting at the breadth of Longo's skills.
In fact, while museums around the world have shown Longo's work, many know him best as the director of music videos, including for New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle" in 1986 and R.E.M.’s “The One I Love” in 1987, and his 1995 film "Johnny Mnemonic," starring Keanu Reeves, Ice-T and Henry Rollins.
In fact, during the exhibition, Milwaukee Film will screen "Johnny Mnemonic: In Black and White" at the Oriental Theatre on Nov. 21 and Longo will be there to take part in a discussion.
“Robert Longo’s work is visually compelling in its exceptional detail and powerful in its reflection of his view of contemporary culture. In this age of constant immersion of images from advertisements to news footage, Longo’s drawings break through the visual deluge in captivating ways,” said Marcelle Polednik, PhD, Donna and Donald Baumgartner Director.
“We look forward to engaging our audiences with his most recent body of work, a long-overdue and distinct opportunity.”
Born in 1953 Longo first gained prominence in the 1980s as part of the Pictures Generation with Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger.
Later, he became known for his monumental charcoal drawings of animals and nature, as well as global protest movements and conflicts.
“Robert Longo’s ability to capture both the essence and experience of an image through his monumental charcoal drawings is unparalleled,” said Andera.
“His subject matter can range from the profound, to the inspiring, to the tragic, and the works resonate with a power that comes from the combination of Longo’s thorough consideration of the image and his meticulous technique.”
Milwaukee Art Museum has two 1983 Longo lithographs in its collection and last month, it honored the arist as its 2024 honoree at the annual Art:Forward Gala museum benefit.
Longo has now also donated to Milwaukee Art Museum one of the works that hangs in the current show.
An exhibition catalog is also being published and includes essays by Andera, journalist Tom Teicholz and artist Rashid Johnson.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
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