Curatorialist

As you may have noticed, my RAM (Random Artist of the Month) is actually more like RAW. That’s what makes it random!

There’s so much to like about Robert Longo, for me. He studied sculpture, but preferred drawing. He was/is heavily influenced by all forms of popular culture and mass media. But he did something that no artist did for me – he bridged a gap between drawing and fine art in a way I hadn’t seen before. All the drawings I had studied and admired in art school, and before, were more like sketches. Rarely would you see a drawing for drawing’s sake and if you did, it was usually of the Picasso variety, which felt like the pen was held with two fingers near the top. Longo’s “Men in Cities” series, which depicted business men (and women, actually) against a white seamless background, were rendered to perfection. The images were stark and gorgeously applied with thick lines and layers of shading. It’s said that graphite is his clay.

The writhing poses of his figures in that series added to the effectiveness of the image and the white seamless background which served to single out the image in some kind of hero-ized fashion was, potentially, ground zero for all the ads we see today on white backgrounds. It is not as though he invented the white backdrop, but for many, it was the effectiveness of that series that burned that graphic style into our brains.

I followed Longo through his career for a long time, buying his books and prints and even spending time emulating his drawing style. He has other great pieces of work, most notably his “Black Flags” series, but also continues to do extraordinary charcoal drawings that blow your mind and challenge your brain. He has an incredible eye for iconic imagery and depicts them in such a way that you are forced to evaluate your belief system and understanding of it. From Longo’s drawings, one can learn about photography, sculpture, fine art and graphic art. But one can also learn about the world, media and the place of the observer.

You see remnants of his work and style all over the place. Take this Portland artist, Zach Johnsen. His drawings/illustrations are also top notch, and he’s certainly got his own thing going on, but there is a lotta Longo in there. And that ain’t a bad thing.