{"id":535450,"date":"2026-04-17T05:51:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T05:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/535450\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T05:51:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T05:51:24","slug":"men-in-the-cities-the-photos-behind-robert-longos-spellbinding-art-1979-1982","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/535450\/","title":{"rendered":"Men In The Cities: The Photos Behind Robert Longo’s Spellbinding Art (1979-1982)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s about that moment when you feel like you\u2019re being pulled in different directions, a kind of metaphoric depiction of the forces acting upon us in modern life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Robert Longo<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Robert<\/p>\n

For his series Men in the Cities, Robert Longo<\/a> set up his camera on the rooftop of his New York<\/a> apartment, dressed his friends, including Cindy Sherman<\/a> and Larry Gargosian<\/a>, in business attire and captured their movements as he threw various objects at them. Their reactions show them in an apparent state of rapture, captured in the moment of pain, ecstasy and abandon.<\/p>\n

Taken between 1977 and 1982, Longo turned his photographs into large-scale, monochrome charcoal and graphite drawings.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Robert wanted to make some photographs of people in mid-air to base his drawings on, I was happy to participate. His photos were a means to an end. I don\u2019t think he appreciated how good they were on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Cindy Sherman<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Men<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it seemed like the uniform of white western world was a shirt and tie for a man and, you know, a skirt or a dress for a woman. So I chose these images for the drawings, but I channeled through a punk sensibility, which was, like, thinner ties, and thinner lapels, and tighter pants, and sexier, tighter dresses. So I didn\u2019t want them to be those people. At the same time I wanted them to be white doomed people. I was very aware that I was making only white people because they\u2014to me they were like\u2014they were, like, buildings falling down, you know. They were, like, collapsing buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Robert Longo<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

\u201cI exploded with the \u2018Men in the Cities\u2019 (1977\u201383) series in the late 1970s and early \u201980s. They became so successful that they entered the culture in a way that caused me to lose authorship. They became iPod ads, fashion ads. I intended viewers to see \u2018Men in the Cities\u2019 as a series of images. I always wanted them to be like a guitar chord in a Sex Pistols song \u2013 an abstract symbol.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Robert Longo<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you draw an image\u2026 you burn it. It becomes part of every molecule in your body, and then you spit it back out to project it onto a surface. It\u2019s a transmutation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Robert Longo<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was making drawings in the beginning [in the 1980s], all my friends were doing photographs and films and videos. I didn\u2019t have any money, so to make a long story short I took home some backdrop paper and just started to draw. I realised I could do with drawing what I wanted to do; I didn\u2019t have to make photographs. I took drawing to this obscene point where I wanted to compete with movies and magazines and television. It\u2019s a weird zone because when I tell people I make charcoal drawings they think I\u2019m making these little, tiny things, but I\u2019m not. It\u2019s amazing to make something out of dust.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Robert Longo to Ropac<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Screenshot<\/p>\n

Via: Smithsonian<\/a>, Weng<\/a>, incamera<\/a>, Frieze<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s about that moment when you feel like you\u2019re being pulled in different directions, a kind of metaphoric…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-535450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}