Barbara

Barbara forms part of a late lithograph collection, a continuation of Robert Longo’s 'Men in the cities' charcoal series of the 1980s. In this work, he explores the duality of spasmodic movements between life and death. Combat scenes from the film The American Soldier, written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and dancing movements from punk and rock music inspired the series, suggesting warfare’s impact on U.S. politics and late twentieth-century counterculture. Longo dresses his urbanites in smart clothes, dissolving the uniqueness of their poses into the everydayness of their appearance. To produce and capture the natural flow of contorted motion in 'Men in the Cities,' the artist used photography to survey real-life movements.
Robert Longo (b. 1953, New York) is a plastic artist, photographer, and filmmaker. He studied Fine Arts at Buffalo State College along with artist Cindy Sherman, with whom he began a life-long friendship. Longo’s hyperrealist charcoals and installations seek to create a scene that could otherwise be ephemeral, focusing the public’s attention on the details of the scene and the precision of the artist’s technique.