Robert Longo
Aluminum Nights, 1981
Offset Lithograph and lithograph
28 × 20 inches
Boldly signed in black marker by Robert Longo; pencil numbered 114 from the limited edition of 250 on the verso
Unframed
Aluminum Nights was a 10-year anniversary festival and artist fundraiser at Bond’s. The marathon event saw a capacity audience of many hundreds, and featured an array of performances by artists. Solo and ensemble performances were complemented by video programs over the course of the festival. The roster of artists and presenters included: Eric Bogosian, Brian Eno, David Byrne, Glenn Branca, Nam June Paik, Rhys Chatham, John Giorno, Meredith Monk, Philip Glass, Robert Ashley, Steve Reich, Robert Longo and many more.
Designed by Jo Bonney and Robert Longo. Signed by Robert Longo.
Hand signed by Robert Longo in black marker on the recto
Collectors item!
Wonderful retro piece from the early 1980s art scene in lower Manhattan. This will look gorgeous in any room in the home or office - or in a dance studio!
Robert Longo Biography
Robert Longo was born in 1953 in Brooklyn and grew up in Long Island, New York. He graduated high school in 1970, weeks after the Ohio National Guard massacred several students at Kent State University who were protesting the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.
One of those killed was a former classmate of Longo’s, and his body was shown in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph that was seen across the world. The event shocked Longo, triggering his interest in political activism and media imagery.
In 1972, Longo received a grant to study restoration and art history in Florence. While touring the museums of Europe, he realized he wanted to make, rather than restore art. In 1973, Longo enrolled at Buffalo State College, where he worked for artists Paul Sharits and Hollis Frampton, who introduced him to structuralist filmmaking. Along with Charles Clough, Longo also co-founded Hallwalls (1974–ongoing), an alternative non-profit art exhibition space where he organized shows and talks with artists such as John Baldessari, Lynda Benglis, Robert Irwin, Joan Jonas, Bruce Nauman, and Richard Serra.
At Buffalo State, Longo started a friendship–that still exists to this day–with Cindy Sherman, and in 1977 the two moved to New York together, where Longo began working as a studio assistant to Vito Acconci and Dennis Oppenheim. That year he was included in the exhibition Pictures at Artist’s Space, curated by Douglas Crimp, which showcased work by a group of five young artists who were engaged with the politics of image-making, drawing from advertisements, newspapers, film, and television. The “Pictures Generation,” as they became known, included artists such as Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Louise Lawler, David Salle, and drew from semiotics and poststructuralist theory to investigate the way meaning is made and circulated in modern society. Their work often critiqued the anaesthetizing power of consumer capitalism and the indoctrinating effects of mass media. At his first solo show at Metro Pictures in 1981, Longo presented his charcoal and graphite Men in the Cities drawings, which instantly became icons of the “Pictures Generation,” and some of the most recognizable artworks of the 1980s.
Longo performed in New York rock clubs with the band Menthol Wars with Richard Prince, throughout the 1980s. During that period, he also designed numerous album covers, including Glenn Branca’s The Ascension (1981) and The Replacements’ Tim (1985). In 1986, he directed his first music video for New Order’s chart-topping song Bizarre Love Triangle, and the following year directed The One I Love, a video for R.E.M.’s first hit single.
Longo began working with diverse materials at increasingly ambitious scales. His Combines series, first exhibited in 1983, incorporated materials such as paint, graphite, wood, plaster, cast bronze, and steel in works that were part-painting, part-sculptural reliefs. Using Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of montage to juxtapose conflicting imagery and forms, they touched on many of the themes of war, alienation, and consumption that have remained central to Longo’s practice. The Combines were followed in 1990 by Black Flags, a series of cast
bronze American Flags...