Great Sharks by Robert Longo. What do Goya, Eisenstein and Longo have in common: the artist’s guide to the exhibition at Garage While working on the exhibition, you went to the Russian state archives
Eisenstein was supposed to work for the government, Goya for the king. I work for the art market. Throughout the history of art, there has been a specific client, the church or the government. Interestingly, as soon as institutions ceased to be the main clients, artists had a new problem of finding what they wanted to depict on canvas. Unlike the king, the art market does not dictate what exactly we need to do, so I am freer than the artists who came before me.
Goya did not create etchings for the church or kings, so they are much closer to what I do. In the case of Eisenstein, we tried, we tried to remove a lot of the political context, we slowed down the footage, leaving only the images - so we tried to get away from politics. When I was a student, I never thought about the political background, the repression, the pressure that went hand in hand with making these films. But the more I studied Eisenstein, the more I realized that he simply wanted to make films - and for this, alas, he was forced to seek government support.
When Caravaggio found himself in Rome, he had to work for the church. Otherwise, he simply would not have had the opportunity to paint large paintings. As a result, he was forced to retell the same stories over and over again. It's funny how similar it is to a popular Hollywood movie. So we have much more in common with the artists of the past than we used to think, and their influence on each other is difficult to overestimate. Eisenstein himself studied Goya's work and even created paintings that look like storyboards - here are six of them, all together they actually look like storyboards for a movie. And the etchings are even numbered.
One way or another, all artists are connected and influenced by each other. The history of art is a great weapon that helps us cope with the challenges of each new day. And personally, I also use art to get there - this is my time machine.
Francisco Goya, "The Tragic Case of a Bull Attacking the Spectators in the Madrid Arena"
Series "Tauromachy", sheet 21
We learned that the Museum of the Revolution in Moscow holds a complete set of Goya's etchings. It was a gift from the USSR in 1937 as a token of gratitude for helping the Spaniards fight Franco. The etchings are simply unique: the last copy was made from Goya's original plates and all of them - which is simply amazing - look as if they were printed yesterday. At the exhibition we tried to avoid the most famous works - I just think that people will look at unfamiliar works a little longer. We also chose those that I think look almost like a film or journalism.
I even have one etching by Goya at home, I bought it a long time ago. And of those presented at the exhibition, my favorite is the one with the bull. The work looks exactly like a still from a movie - everything somehow works together cinematically, the bull with the tail and the people it seems to crash into. When I look at this work, I always think about what happened before and what will happen after this moment. Just like in the movies.
Francisco Goya, "Amazing Folly"
Series “Proverbs”, sheet 3
Here is another work that I really like - Goya’s family stands in a row, as if birds are sitting on a tree branch. I myself have three sons, and this engraving reminds me of family, there is something beautiful and important about it.
When I paint, I really often think about what will happen later to the characters in my painting. I often do a frame exercise, like in a comic strip, where I sketch out a lot of rectangles of different sizes and experiment with the composition inside. And Eisenstein in this sense is an excellent example to follow, his compositions are impeccable: the picture is often built around a diagonal and such a structure creates psychological tension.
Sergei Eisenstein and Grigory Alexandrov, frame from the film “Battleship Potemkin”
I love all of Eisenstein’s films, and from Potemkin I remember first of all this beautiful scene with boats in the harbor. The water glistens and it makes the shot incredibly beautiful. And my most favorite shot is probably the one with the big flag and Lenin screaming. Both of these shots are truly masterpieces of sorts.
Sergei Eisenstein, still from the film “Sentimental Romance”
In the film “Sentimental Romance” there is an incredibly powerful shot: a woman stands in an apartment by the window. It really looks like a painting.
And I'm also very interested in seeing what happened when we placed these films side by side - in the cinema you see scene by scene, but here you see slow-motion images of different films located next to each other. This strange collage, it seems to me, makes it clear how Eisenstein's brain works. In his films, the cameras did not move behind the actors, they were static, and each time he offers us clearly constructed, specific images. Eisenstein worked at the dawn of cinema, and each frame had to be imagined in advance - in fact, to see the future film image by image.
Cinema, painting and contemporary art are one and the same thing: the creation of pictures. The other day I was in a museum, looking for the Black Square, and while walking through all these halls of images and paintings, I realized something important. The main power of art is the burning desire of a human being to explain to you what exactly it sees. “This is how I see,” the artist tells us. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes it may seem to you that the crown of a tree resembles a face, and you immediately want to tell your friend about it, ask him: “Do you see what I see?” Making art is an attempt to show people how you see the world. And at the heart of this is the desire to feel alive.
Robert Longo, untitled, 2016
(The plot is related to the tragic events in Baltimore. - Note ed.)
I chose this image to show not only what happened, but also to explain to you how I see and feel about it. At the same time, of course, it was necessary to create an image that the viewer would want to look at. And I also think that you may not read the newspapers and not know about what happened, but this is wrong - it is important to see everything.
I love the painting (a painting by Théodore Gericault, painted in 1819, based on the shipwreck of a frigate off the coast of Senegal. - Note ed.) - for me this is a truly amazing work about a terrible disaster. Do you remember what it was? Of the 150 people on the raft, only 15 survived. I also try to show the beauty of disasters, and a great example is the bullet holes in my paintings.
I am far from politics, and ideally I would like to be able to live my life and just know that people are not suffering. But I do what I have to do - and show what I have to show.
I think both of these artists were in a similar situation. It is a pity that the deep ideas of Eisenstein's films were distorted. It's similar to the situation in America: the idea of democracy, which lies at the heart of our country, has been constantly distorted. Goya also witnessed terrible events, and he wanted to make us look at things realistically, as if to stop what was happening. He talks about slowing down the world and perception. I think I also deliberately slow things down with my images. You can turn on your computer and quickly look through thousands of images on the Internet, but I want to create them in a way that stops time and allows you to look at things more closely. To do this, in one work I can combine several images, as in classical art, and this idea of connecting the unconscious is incredibly important to me.
Robert Longo, untitled
January 5, 2015 (the work is a tribute to the memory of the editors of Charlie Hebdo. - Note ed.)
This topic was extremely important for me, because I am an artist myself. Hebdo is a magazine where cartoonists, that is, artists, worked. What happened really shocked me: each of us could have been among those people who were killed. This is not just an attack on Hebdo - it is an attack on all artists. What the terrorists wanted to say was: you shouldn't make pictures like this, so this threat actually concerns me.
I chose cracked glass as the basis for the image. First of all, it's beautiful - you'll want to look at it one way or another. But that's not the only reason: it reminded me of a jellyfish, some kind of organic creature. Hundreds of cracks radiate from the hole in the glass, like an echo of a terrible event that happened. The event is in the past, but its consequences continue. It's really scary.
Robert Longo, untitled
2015 (the work is dedicated to the September 11 disaster. - Note ed.)
On September 11th, I was playing basketball in one of the gyms in Brooklyn, on the 10th floor of a tall building, and I had a great view of everything from the window. And my studio is located not far from the site of the tragedy, so I couldn’t get there for a long time. In my studio there is a large painting created in honor of this terrible event - at first I just sketched a picture on the studio wall, painted an airplane. The same plane that flew into the first tower, I painted it on the wall. Then I had to repaint the studio walls, and I was very worried that the drawing would disappear, so I made another one. Please note that all my drawings in the exhibition are covered with glass - and as a result you see your reflections in them. Planes crash into reflections, and parts of some of my works are reflected in each other. There are certain angles in the exhibition where you can see a bullet hole in Jesus from a certain angle, and here you see a plane crashing into something.
For me, overlaying drawings on top of each other is not just a chronology of disasters, but rather an attempt to heal. Sometimes we take poison to get better, and it is important to have the courage to live with open eyes, to be courageous to see certain things. I myself am probably not a very courageous person - all men like to think that they are brave, but most of them, it seems to me, are cowards.
I'm lucky to have the opportunity to exhibit, and I use this opportunity to talk about what I think is important. There is no need to create something mysterious, complex, full of narcissism. Instead, it is better to address the issues that matter now. This is what I think about the real tasks of art.
At the Museum of Modern Art "Garage" exhibition opened “Testimony”: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo. Stills from Eisenstein's films, Goya's engravings and Longo's charcoal drawings are combined into a black and white postmodern mix. Separately, at the exhibition you can see forty-three drawings by Eisenstein from the collection of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, exhibited for the first time, as well as etchings by Francisco Goya from the collection of the State Museum of Contemporary History of Russia. ARTANDHOUSES spoke with the famous American artist Robert Longo about how difficult it was to stand on par with the giants of art history, about the self-sufficiency of youth and his experiences in cinema.
How did the idea for the exhibition come about? What do the artists Longo, Goya and Eisenstein have in common?
Exhibition co-curator Kate Fowle heard me talk about these artists, how they inspired me and how much I admired their work. She suggested that I put our works together and make this exhibition.
I have always been interested in artists who were witnesses of their time and documented everything that happened. I think it is important that in the works of Eisenstein and Goya we see evidence of the eras in which they lived.
While working on the exhibition, you went to Russian state archives. What was the most interesting thing about working with archival materials?
The museum's amazing team gave me access to places I would never have been able to go on my own. I was amazed by the archive of literature and art, its huge halls with filing cabinets. As we walked along the endless corridors, I constantly asked the employees what was in these boxes, what was in those. They once said: “And in these boxes we have Chekhov!” I was struck by the very idea of Chekhov in a box.
You also met with leading expert on Eisenstein’s work, Naum Kleiman...
I went to Kleiman for some kind of permission. I asked what Eisenstein would think about what we were doing? Because I felt that the exhibition was quite boldly conceived. But Kleiman was very enthusiastic about the project. We can say that in a certain way he approved what we were doing. He is an amazingly lively person who speaks brilliant English, although at first he claimed that he barely spoke it.
Is it difficult for you to compare with Goya and Eisenstein? Is it difficult to stand on par with the geniuses of the past?
When Kate asked me if I wanted to participate in such an exhibition, I thought: what role would I be given? Probably auxiliary. These are real giants of art history! But, in the end, we are all artists, each lived in his own era and depicted it. It's very important to understand that this was Kate's idea, not mine. And what place I will take in history, we will find out in a hundred years.
In your interviews you often say that you steal pictures. What do you have in mind?
We live in a world oversaturated with images, and we can say that they penetrate into us. So what am I doing? I borrow "pictures" from this crazy flow of images and place them in a completely different context - art. I choose archetypal images, but I deliberately slow them down so people can stop and think about them. We can say that all the media around us is a one-way street. We are not given a chance to react somehow. And I am trying to answer this diversity. I am looking for images that are archetypal from antiquity. I look at the works of Goya and Eisenstein, and it amazes me that I subconsciously use motifs in my work that are also found in them.
You entered art history as an artist from the Pictures Generation. What motivated you when you started borrowing images from the media? Was it a protest against modernism?
It was an attempt to resist the amount of images we were surrounded by in America. There were so many images that people lost their sense of reality. I belong to a generation that grew up watching television. TV was my babysitter. Art is a reflection of what we grew up with, what surrounded us in childhood. Do you know Anselm Kiefer? He grew up in post-war Germany, which was in ruins. And we see all this in his art. In my art we see black and white images that look like they came straight out of the TV screen that I grew up with.
What was the role of critic Douglas Crimp in organizing the legendary Pictures exhibition in 1977, in which you participated along with Sherri Levine, Jack Goldstein and others, after which you became famous?
He gathered artists. He first met me and Goldstein and realized that something interesting was happening. And he had the idea to travel around America and find artists working in the same direction. He discovered many new names. It was a gift of fate for me that at such a young age I was found by a great intellectual who wrote about my work (Douglas Crimp's article on the new generation of artists was published in an influential American magazineOctober. - E.F.). It was important that he put into words what we wanted to express. Because we were making art, but we couldn't find the words to explain what we were depicting.
You often depict apocalyptic scenes: atomic explosions, sharks with open mouths, diving fighters. What attracts you to the topic of disaster?
In art there is a whole direction of depicting disasters. For me, an example of this genre is Gericault’s painting “The Raft of the Medusa.” My paintings based on disasters are something like an attempt at disarmament. Through art I would like to get rid of the feeling of fear that these phenomena generate. Perhaps my most striking work on this topic is the work with a bullet mark, which was inspired by the events around the Charlie Hebdo magazine. On the one hand, it is very beautiful, but on the other hand, it is the embodiment of cruelty. For me, this is a way to say: “I’m not afraid of you! You can shoot at me, but I will continue to work! And you would go to hell!”
You make films, video clips, played in a musical group, and paint pictures. Who do you feel more like: a director, an artist or a musician?
An artist. This is the most free profession of all. When you make a movie, people pay money and think they can tell you what to do.
Are you not very happy with your movie experience?
I had a difficult experience filming the film. « Johnny the Mnemonic." I originally wanted to make a small black and white sci-fi film, but the producers kept interfering. In the end, it came out about 50-70 percent the way I would have liked it to be. I had a plan - for the 25th anniversary of the film, I would edit it, make it black and white, re-edit it and put it on the Internet. This would be my act of revenge on the film company!
You were part of the art and music underground of the 1970s and 80s. How do you remember those times?
As you get older, you realize that you are not entering the future, but the future is approaching you. The past is constantly changing in our minds. When I read now about the events of the 1970s and 80s, I think that everything was completely different. The past is not as rosy as it is made out to be. There were also difficulties. We were without money. I worked terrible jobs, including working as a taxi driver. And yet it was a wonderful time when music and art were closely linked. And we really wanted to create something new.
If you could go back in time to when you were young, what would you change?
I wouldn't do drugs. If I were talking to my younger self now, I would say that to expand the boundaries of consciousness, you don’t need stimulants, you need to actively work. It's easy to be young, it's much more difficult to live to old age. And be relevant to your time. The idea of destruction may seem cool when you're young, but it's not. And now I have not drunk or taken any stimulants for more than twenty years.
Robert is known to a wide audience as the director of the cult film Johnny Mnemonic based on the story by the father of cyberpunk, William Gibson. But he is also an excellent artist - and opens two exhibitions in the capital at once. The “Evidence” project at Garage is dedicated to the work of three authors - Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein and Longo himself, who, as co-curator, ties together this multi-layered story. And the Triumph gallery will show works by artists from his studio.
GUSKOV: Robert, the Garage will feature Eisenstein, Goya, and your works. How did you put it all together?
LONGO (laughs): Well, that’s why museums exist, to show different things together. (Seriously.) In fact, the idea for the exhibition came from Kate Fowle, she is the curator. She knew that these two authors greatly influenced me as an artist. Kate and I talked about them more than once, she understood what was happening, and two years ago she offered me this story.
GUSKOV: What do you all have in common?
LONGO: First of all, we are all witnesses of the time in which we live or lived, and this is very important.
GUSKOV: Are you an equal participant in this story with Eisenstein and Goya?
LONGO: No, Kate gave me the opportunity to influence the exhibition. Usually artists are not included in the project much: curators simply take your works and tell you what to do. And then I came to Russia twice, studied archives and museum collections.
GUSKOV: What do you think about “Garage”?
LONGO (admiringly): This is a very unusual place. I wish there was something like this in the States. What Kate Fowle and Dasha are doing in the Garage (Zhukova. — Interview), simply amazing. As for the exhibition, Eisenstein and Goya and I have one important thing in common - graphics. Eisenstein's work is incredibly beautiful. Kate helped me get to RGALI, where his works are kept. They are very similar to storyboards, but, in principle, they are independent works.
“UNTITLED (PENTECOST)”, 2016.
GUSKOV: Eisenstein's graphics, like Goya's, are rather gloomy.
LONGO: Yes, mostly black and white. Gloominess is also a common characteristic for the three of us. That is, of course, there are other colors in Goya’s paintings, but here we are talking about his etchings. In general, it is very difficult to beg his work for an exhibition. We looked in different museums, but one of Kate's assistants learned that the Museum of Contemporary Russian History held a complete selection of Goya's etchings, which was donated to the Soviet government in 1937 in honor of the anniversary of the revolution. The most wonderful thing is that this was the last edition made from original author's boards. They look so fresh as if they were made yesterday.
GUSKOV: By the way, cinema is also part of your creativity. Did Eisenstein influence you so much that you decided to make films?
LONGO: Absolutely right. I first saw his films when I was in my twenties and they blew my mind. But as an American, it was difficult for me to grasp the political implications. At that time we didn’t really understand how Soviet propaganda worked. But putting that aspect aside, the films themselves are simply amazing.
GUSKOV: Like Eisenstein, didn’t everything go smoothly with your cinema?
LONGO: Yeah. I certainly didn't have to deal with Stalin when I made Johnny Mnemonic, but all those Hollywood assholes spoiled my blood. They tried their best to ruin the film.
GUSKOV: Damn producers!
LONGO: Can you imagine?! When I started working on the film, my friend Keanu Reeves, who starred in it, was not yet so famous. But then Speed came out and he became a superstar. And now the movie is ready, and the producers decide to make it a “summer blockbuster.” (Indignantly.) Launch it on the same weekend as the next Batman or Die Hard. What can I say, my budget was 25 million dollars, and these films had a hundred each. Naturally, Johnny Mnemonic was a box office failure. Besides, the more money they pump in to make a blockbuster, the worse the result. They, of course, could have fired me without any problems, but I stayed and tried to keep about 60 percent of the original idea. And yes, (pauses) I wanted the film to be in black and white.
GUSKOV: You wanted to make experimental cinema, but you were prevented. Are your hands free at the exhibition?
LONGO: Certainly. My idea is that artists record time like reporters. But here's the problem. For example, my friend has five thousand pictures on his iPhone, and this volume is hard to comprehend. Imagine: you enter a hall where Eisenstein’s films are being shown in slow motion. The cinema is no longer perceived as a single whole, but you can see how perfect each frame is. The same with Goya - he has more than 200 etchings. The audience's eyes would glaze over from so many, so we selected a few dozen that most closely matched the sentiments of me and Eisenstein. It’s the same with my works: Kate made a strict selection.
GUSKOV: Has popular culture had a strong influence on you?
LONGO: Yes. I'm 63 years old and part of the first generation to grow up with television. On top of that, I had dyslexia; I only started reading after I was thirty. Now I read a lot, but then I looked more at pictures. This is what made me who I am. During my high school years, protests against the Vietnam War began. One guy I studied with died at the University of Kent in 1970, where soldiers shot students. I still remember the photo in the newspaper. My wife, the German actress Barbara Sukowa, was very scared to find out how stuck these images were in my head.
GUSKOV: How did you come to graphics?
LONGO: It is important to me that work, months of work, have been put into my works, and not just pressing a button. People don't immediately understand that this is not a photo.
GUSKOV: For Eisenstein, his drawings, like his films, were a way of therapy to cope with neuroses and phobias, and curb desires. And for you?
LONGO: I think yes. Among some peoples and tribes, shamans do similar things. I understand it this way: a person goes crazy, locks himself in his home and begins to create objects. And then he goes out and shows art to people who also suffer, and they feel better. Through art, artists heal themselves, and the byproduct is helping others. This of course sounds stupid (laughs), but it seems to me that we are modern healers.
GUSKOV: Or preachers.
LONGO: And art is my religion, I believe in it. At least people are not killed in his name.
(English) Robert Longo, R. 1953) is a contemporary American artist known for his work in various genres.
Biography
Robert Longo born January 7, 1953 in Brooklyn (New York), USA. He studied at the University of North Texas (Denton), but dropped out. Later he studied sculpture under the guidance of Leonda Finke. In 1972, he received a grant to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and left for Italy. After returning to the United States, he attended Buffalo State College, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1975. At the same time, he met with photographer Cindy Sherman.
In the late 70s, Robert Longo became interested in organizing performances (for example, Sound Distance of a Good Man). Such works were usually accompanied by the creation of a series of photographs and videos, which were then shown as individual works and parts of installations. At the same time, Longo played in a number of New York punk rock bands and even co-founded the Hallwalls gallery. In 1979-81 the artist also worked on a series of graphic works "People in Cities".
In 1987, Longo presented a series of conceptual sculptures called Object Ghosts. The works from this series are an attempt to rethink and stylize objects from science fiction films (for example, “Nostromo” - that was the name of the ship in the film Alien). A similar idea (but implemented with real props that were used on the set) can be found in the work of Dora Budor.
In 1988, Longo began work on the Black Flag series. The first work in the series was a US flag painted in graphite and visually similar to a painted wooden box. Subsequent works were sculptural images of the US flag made of bronze, each of which was accompanied by a title-signature (for example, “give us back our suffering” - “give us back our suffering”).
In the late 80s, Robert Longo also began making short films (for example, Arena Brains - "Smart Guys in the Arena", 1987). In 1995, Longo acted as director in the science fiction film Johnny Mnemonic. The film is considered a cult film for the cyberpunk genre. The main role was played by Keanu Reeves.
In the 90s and 2000s, Robert Longo continued to create his hyper-realistic images. Works from the series Superheroes (1998) or Ophelia (2002) look like photographs or sculptures, but are ink paintings. The paintings from the series Balcony (2008-09) and The Mysteries (2009) are written in charcoal.
In 2010, Robert Longo created a series of photographs in the style of “People in Cities” for the Italian brand Bottega Veneta.
In 2016-17 At the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, the exhibition “Testimonies” was held, during which some of the works of Robert Longo were shown to the public.
Robert Longo currently lives in New York, USA. Since 1994, he has been married to German actress Barbara Sukowa. The couple has three children.
Pilots, sharks, sexy girls, dancers, the ocean, impressive explosions - this is what New York artist Robert Longo depicts. His illustrations are extremely deep, mystical, powerful and attractive. Perhaps this effect is achieved due to the black and white picture, which the author carefully painted using charcoal.
Robert Longo was born in 1953 in Brooklyn, New York. When talking about himself, the artist never forgets to mention that he loves cinema, comics, magazines and has a weakness for television, which have a significant influence on his work. Robert Longo draws most of the themes for his paintings from what he has seen and read previously. The author has always loved to draw, and although he received a bachelor's degree in sculpture, this does not prevent him from doing what he loves, but on the contrary. Some of the artist’s drawings are very reminiscent of sculptures; he likes the outlines that come out from under the hand. There is a certain power in this.
Major exhibitions of Robert Longo's paintings are held at the Museum of Art in Los Angeles, as well as at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.