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Lot Essay
Please note the image pictured is a study for the work. Untitled (Leo) will be on view at Christie's from May 11-13.
"I don't expect you to understand. You have seen none of this, and even if you tried, you could not imagine it. These are the last things. A house is there one day, and the next day it is gone. A street you walked down yesterday is no longer there today. Even the weather is in constant flux. A day of sun followed by a day of rain, a day of snow followed by a day of fog, warm then cool., wind then stillness, a stretch of bitter cold, and then today, in the middle of winter, an afternoon of fragrant light, warm to the point of merely sweaters. When you live in the city, you learn to take nothing from granted. Close your eyes for a moment, turn around to look at something else, and the thing that was before you is suddenly gone. Nothing lasts, you see, not even the thoughts inside you. And you mustn't waste your time looking for them. Once a thing is gone, that is the end of it" (Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things, 1987).
"A Longo drawing has the impact of a drive-in movie image glimpsed from the highway, and it exerts this graphic force with unabashed ease. The success of Pop Art granted everyone permission to bring high and low art into direct contact. Mixing irony with their enthusiasm for ready-made images, the Pop artists held as tight to their high culture positions as Marcel Duchamp ever did. So does Longo. His ambitions align him with the most prestigious traditions of the New York School. Considered not as pictures but as objects, these drawings display the signs of "serious" post-war American art, all of them derived from the heritage of Jackson Pollock and his generation: large dimensions, indeterminate scale, the bluntness of a central image in place of composition's checks and balance" (C. Ratcliff, Robert Longo, Munich, 1985, p. 13).
Since the 1970s, multimedia artist Robert Longo has attracted attention for his manifold work ranging from music, film and video to installation, drawing and sculpture. Like an Old Master draftsman, Longo achieves an extremely emotional range through his use of chiaroscuro, harnessing light and dark as primary material. His Photorealist drawings are based on images borrowed from the world of media containing a political and social statement, making Longo one of today's most important history painters. His drawings come across like paintings due to their monumental scale. They appear highly emotionally charged in part through his use of chiaroscuro- -the continual coupling of light and dark. In this way Longo captures the world around him, engaging full-force with the sensitivity of the places and objects he reveals.
The present example, Untitled (Leo) was created specifically for the 11th Hour Auction, and represents one of the artist's largest scale charcoal drawings. Robert Longo's mastery of charcoal drawing has made him one of America's most admired artists. With every new work he reinvests the tradition of history painting with fresh relevance and impact, rendering majestic, era-defining images in a sensuous and sculptural Photorealism. Longo has long tackled a variety of environmental phenomenon including his signature wave drawings (Monsters) that read like black and white photographs of the crescendo moment before an epic waive breaks. In the present drawing, Longo portrays the majestic all-powerful ruler of the jungle.
"Rendered in high contrast black and white, the drawings reproduce the moment of a tremendous surge of unleashed force, as the rich expanse of velvety charcoal surfaces parallels the subject's vastness, mystery and intensity. Devoid of people, location and color, the looming crests of exploding power are notably singular portraits of emotional and physical forces. The near abstraction of the waves is strikingly dissimilar to the more familiar representations of the sea as poetic and romantic, or in terms of man against nature" (Metro Pictures, Press Release Monsters, September-October 2002).
"I don't expect you to understand. You have seen none of this, and even if you tried, you could not imagine it. These are the last things. A house is there one day, and the next day it is gone. A street you walked down yesterday is no longer there today. Even the weather is in constant flux. A day of sun followed by a day of rain, a day of snow followed by a day of fog, warm then cool., wind then stillness, a stretch of bitter cold, and then today, in the middle of winter, an afternoon of fragrant light, warm to the point of merely sweaters. When you live in the city, you learn to take nothing from granted. Close your eyes for a moment, turn around to look at something else, and the thing that was before you is suddenly gone. Nothing lasts, you see, not even the thoughts inside you. And you mustn't waste your time looking for them. Once a thing is gone, that is the end of it" (Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things, 1987).
"A Longo drawing has the impact of a drive-in movie image glimpsed from the highway, and it exerts this graphic force with unabashed ease. The success of Pop Art granted everyone permission to bring high and low art into direct contact. Mixing irony with their enthusiasm for ready-made images, the Pop artists held as tight to their high culture positions as Marcel Duchamp ever did. So does Longo. His ambitions align him with the most prestigious traditions of the New York School. Considered not as pictures but as objects, these drawings display the signs of "serious" post-war American art, all of them derived from the heritage of Jackson Pollock and his generation: large dimensions, indeterminate scale, the bluntness of a central image in place of composition's checks and balance" (C. Ratcliff, Robert Longo, Munich, 1985, p. 13).
Since the 1970s, multimedia artist Robert Longo has attracted attention for his manifold work ranging from music, film and video to installation, drawing and sculpture. Like an Old Master draftsman, Longo achieves an extremely emotional range through his use of chiaroscuro, harnessing light and dark as primary material. His Photorealist drawings are based on images borrowed from the world of media containing a political and social statement, making Longo one of today's most important history painters. His drawings come across like paintings due to their monumental scale. They appear highly emotionally charged in part through his use of chiaroscuro- -the continual coupling of light and dark. In this way Longo captures the world around him, engaging full-force with the sensitivity of the places and objects he reveals.
The present example, Untitled (Leo) was created specifically for the 11th Hour Auction, and represents one of the artist's largest scale charcoal drawings. Robert Longo's mastery of charcoal drawing has made him one of America's most admired artists. With every new work he reinvests the tradition of history painting with fresh relevance and impact, rendering majestic, era-defining images in a sensuous and sculptural Photorealism. Longo has long tackled a variety of environmental phenomenon including his signature wave drawings (Monsters) that read like black and white photographs of the crescendo moment before an epic waive breaks. In the present drawing, Longo portrays the majestic all-powerful ruler of the jungle.
"Rendered in high contrast black and white, the drawings reproduce the moment of a tremendous surge of unleashed force, as the rich expanse of velvety charcoal surfaces parallels the subject's vastness, mystery and intensity. Devoid of people, location and color, the looming crests of exploding power are notably singular portraits of emotional and physical forces. The near abstraction of the waves is strikingly dissimilar to the more familiar representations of the sea as poetic and romantic, or in terms of man against nature" (Metro Pictures, Press Release Monsters, September-October 2002).