By accident, I found his work. Neat, award winning art book from 2012 priced with extortionist level in Finland (Akateeminen..), but I kept wondering should I take it or not. And after few visits in bookstore over several months, decided that I just forget about it. No use spending like 90 euro for this book. Eventually found one for 34 euro abroad while visiting some bookstore...
So who / what is the Robert Longo? Well, the little I know & read, is that one day in 1999 he was at his studio, pissed off for not having his graphite pens, but instead found pile of charcoal sticks and powder, and decided to give it a try. And now, more than decade later, there is huge amount of MASSIVE charcoal works produced.
His idea and method is pretty simple:
Iconic images done in almost photo-realistic manner in huge size, with charcoal, with deep large black areas and extremely nice grey toned fades.
Iconic - in some ways is always reminding of the nature of mankind. Or... just is this american pop art afterall ? So what is "iconic" in this case: Big tits. Cars. American football players. Huge foaming waves ready for surfers. Sharks. Lions. Airplanes. planets. nuclear explosions. etc. Usually something very simple, yet effective. Things what anyone who knows the western culture, immediately has some sort of connection. But beyond the (too?) blunt choices, there is simply magnificent scale of his craft. It's hard to really explain, even by samples online. Book is absolutely better. But I'm sure anyone who have seen exhibition, will tell book must be worthless comparing to real deal?
I admire also the choice of tools. We're basically talking about something, that IF it's not stone sculpture, this is just about as eternal as man can make. Some (cave) drawings from 30000 years ago are made with coal.
more:
http://www.robertlongo.com/
