Robert Longo

Robert Longo is a famous Painter, Sculptor and Filmmaker, based in New York. Longo was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1953 and grew up in suburban Long Island. As a child, Longo was involved in many youth arts activites and developed an early fascination with all forms of mass media, especially movies, television, magazines, and comic books. These influences are still prevalent in his work today.
Longo's art training background is quite varied. He began studying at at the University of North Texas, but left before finishing his degree. After a break from university, Longo began studying sculpture under the guidance of Leonda Finke, who encouraged the young artist to pursue a career in the visual arts. In 1972, Longo received a grant to study at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy. Upon his return to New York, Longo enrolled at the State University College in Buffalo where he received a BFA in 1975.

'I ended up in Buffalo in the mid-'70s [at the State University College of New York, as a fine arts major]. I had decided I wanted to be an artist after failing at everything else. I had just returned from Europe, studying art history. The college wasn't much, but I was fortunate to meet up with some interesting people and a few teachers, and the fuse was lit. Around that time I met Cindy [Sherman], and we started living together. I had just rented my first studio in an old ice factory. There I met Charlie Clough, an artist who was making really interesting work and who generously turned me on to the current contemporary art. He and I started Hallwalls, so called because the gallery space was a hallway between our studios.(Robert Longo Talks to Mary Hau, Artforum, 2003).
Longo eventually moved to New York City to join the underground art scene of the 1970s.
Initially studying sculpture, Longo’s favourite medium was drawing. Longo became famous in the 1980s for his 'Men in the Cities' series. These works were his life-size charcoal drawings of suit clad businessmen, falling or contorting. These were also featured as a decoration in Patrick Bateman’s apartment in the movie ‘American Psycho'.
In an interview with Mary Haus, Longo described the work of this period as: “…a way of critiquing what was American. I wanted to take an aggressive position in a culture that I thought was sick.”

In the 1980s, Longo also directed a vairety of music videos for acts including, Megadeth, R.E.M and New Order. He also directed 80s movie, Johnny Mnemonic starring Keaunu Reeves.

Longo had major retrospective exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1989 and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 1990, and a touring exhibition throughout Japan in 1995.

http://www.robertlongo.com/

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