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Lot Essay
‘Drawing from photos is a way of reclaiming the images that haunt us. By drawing them, I make them become not just something I am looking at but something that becomes part of me.’ – Robert Longo
Untitled is an outstanding example from Robert Longo’s celebrated series Men in Cities which he began in the early 1980s. In the center of this larger-than-life drawing, Longo has rendered a woman in velvety black charcoal. Her body thrusts forward like a ship’s figurehead, and the proud yet unnatural pose is characteristic of the series. To achieve these contortions, Longo threw tennis balls at his models or rigged them into harnesses, the latter demonstrated in the present work. Set against a blank background and devoid of any contextualizing details, Untitled is a study in contrasts, enigmatic and alluring. When isolated against negative space, these figures have an effortlessly cool, rock star appeal; since childhood, Longo has been fascinated with hero-types such as the pilot or the cowboy. Men in Cities was inspired by his numerous visits to the New York City Stock Exchange, itself a highly theatrical place. Certainly, these drawings are cinematic, figures frozen in time at the exact moment of excessive drama. This is a world that is glossier and more exciting than reality. Curator Douglas Eklund described the series as the ‘static extensions into [the] space of images that were once part of a narrative flow, here stopped for eternity’ (D. Ecklund, ‘His Gesture Moved Us to Tears’: Pictures Art in a Reinvigorated Market’, The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 234). With its richly delineated lines and heightened vigour, Untitled seems ripped from a film whose narrative will remain forever unknown and yet is nevertheless alive.
Untitled is an outstanding example from Robert Longo’s celebrated series Men in Cities which he began in the early 1980s. In the center of this larger-than-life drawing, Longo has rendered a woman in velvety black charcoal. Her body thrusts forward like a ship’s figurehead, and the proud yet unnatural pose is characteristic of the series. To achieve these contortions, Longo threw tennis balls at his models or rigged them into harnesses, the latter demonstrated in the present work. Set against a blank background and devoid of any contextualizing details, Untitled is a study in contrasts, enigmatic and alluring. When isolated against negative space, these figures have an effortlessly cool, rock star appeal; since childhood, Longo has been fascinated with hero-types such as the pilot or the cowboy. Men in Cities was inspired by his numerous visits to the New York City Stock Exchange, itself a highly theatrical place. Certainly, these drawings are cinematic, figures frozen in time at the exact moment of excessive drama. This is a world that is glossier and more exciting than reality. Curator Douglas Eklund described the series as the ‘static extensions into [the] space of images that were once part of a narrative flow, here stopped for eternity’ (D. Ecklund, ‘His Gesture Moved Us to Tears’: Pictures Art in a Reinvigorated Market’, The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 234). With its richly delineated lines and heightened vigour, Untitled seems ripped from a film whose narrative will remain forever unknown and yet is nevertheless alive.