1. Exhibition view, Photo : Louisiana Museum of Modern Art / Camilla Stephan
Robert Longo, showing down the images...
In an age dominated by a constant stream of images, notifications, and content that becomes obsolete in an instant, Robert Longo's work stands as a radical meditation on time, and memory. A key figure in the "Pictures Generation" alongside Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince, the American artist (born in 1953 in Brooklyn) merges a profound commitment to the image with a reflection on the artist's responsibilities in the face of contemporary crises.
The exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (April 11 – August 31, 2025), in partnership with the Albertina in Vienna, is the first major retrospective of Longo's work in Scandinavia. It brings together 53 works produced between 1978 and 2024, on loan from institutions and private collections in Europe and the United States. The exhibition retraces the artist's major series, from Men in the Cities to his recent images of armed conflict, including Freud Drawings, God Machines, and The Destroyer Cycle.
2. Exhibition view, Photo : Louisiana Museum of Modern Art / Camilla Stephan
Technique and perception: the dramaturgy of charcoal
The specificity of Longo's work lies above all in his use of charcoal, which he handles with virtuosity to create images that are both hyperrealistic and spectacular. Although he initially disliked the medium for its imprecision, he adopted it out of necessity in the early 2000s and discovered its immense potential: quickly covering vast surfaces, shaping forms through subtraction (erasing, scraping), and modulating material through smudging. The artist literally sculpts the surface of the paper, using charcoal as one would chisel marble.
This process is slow, often involving a team of assistants, and takes hundreds of hours. While the original images often media-based lasts only a moment, the drawing demands prolonged attention. The image becomes a ritual act. Blacks are layered in varying temperatures, from warm black to cold black. Paradoxically, white is not added but revealed: the scraped paper becomes a source of light. This technique gives the work striking three-dimensionality: the drawings appear sculpted in light and shadow.
Far from sketches or preparatory studies, Longo conceives of drawing as a full-fledged "painting," reconnecting with pictorial tradition while subverting it. In this sense, he transposes masterpieces of Abstract Expressionism (Pollock, Frankenthaler, de Kooning) into black-and-white reinterpretations drawn by hand with meticulous precision. He does not copy: he reconstructs. He does not quote: he intensifies.
3. Exhibition view, Photo : Louisiana Museum of Modern Art / Camilla Stephan
The image as political motif: figures, power and violence
Robert Longo draws power: military, religious, natural. He dissects it and offers it as condensed visual narratives. The recurring motifs in his work form a lexicon of icons, bodies, and symbols.
The body, first of all, as seen in Men in the Cities (1979–1983), is the vector of generalized tension: male and female figures frozen in moments of falling, rejection, or shock, inspired by a scene from Fassbinder's The American Soldier. Models were photographed in startled poses provoked by thrown objects or loud noises, then translated into large-scale drawings. Dressed in black suits, isolated on white backgrounds, they symbolize the tense individualism of Reagan-era America, marked by urban paranoia and yuppie culture.
The political dimension pervades his work. In The Destroyer Cycle (2014–), he reflects on events such as the Ferguson riots, terrorist attacks, and forced migration. These images are always recontextualized, reframed, dramatized. For instance, Untitled (Raft at Sea) (2016–2017) evokes both the contemporary migration crisis and Géricault's Raft of the Medusa: same horizon, same composition, same despair. Yet the perspective here is human-scale: the viewer is at sea level, like the passengers. Empathy, identification.
The sacred is also central to his series, notably God Machines (2008–2011). These are monumental depictions of emblematic places of worship (Notre-Dame, Mecca, a synagogue), rendered in majestic yet ominous compositions. It's less about spirituality than symbolic power: mystical lighting, crushing perspective, cold reverence.
4. Exhibition view, Photo : Louisiana Museum of Modern Art / Camilla Stephan
"I feel a moral imperative to preserve the images of our shared dystopic present." This "moral imperative," as Longo calls it, places his work within the historical tradition of the image as witness.
Longo sees himself as a contemporary "history painter." He reinterprets the codes of historical painting: monumental scale, dramatic composition, dynamic light, narrative density. He does not paint kings or battles, but the telegrams of our era: drone strikes, nuclear explosions, Iranian protests, Freud's apartment door.
In Freud Drawings, he draws inspiration from photographs taken in 1938 by Edmund Engelman in Vienna. Longo depicts objects left behind by Freud before his exile. Through his technique, he gives presence to absence. The reflections on the black door evoke Nazi propaganda films; the peephole becomes a symbol of surveillance. This is haunted memory rendered visible.
He always operates on two levels: the iconic (collective memory) and the experiential (the viewer's confrontation). In a society where images have become background noise, he offers a concentrated silence. Drawing slows the gaze, imposes duration, provokes engagement. He transforms the image into an event.
Robert Longo conceives his drawings as political acts, as mirrors held up to our time. It's not about denunciation but fixation: restoring form, density, and visual truth to events lost in the digital flood. His art proposes a form of symbolic degrowth: slowness, materiality, duration, commitment. Through his formal ambition, moral intensity, and technical mastery, Longo stakes out a rare position: that of an artist who still believes an image can change something.
Informations about the exhibition
Place: Lousiana Museum of Modern Art
Date: 11.4.2025 – 31.8.2025
Curators: Anders Kold
Ticket: Available at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
GI Strandvej 13
3050 Humlebeak
Phone: +45 49 19 07 19
Mail: mail@louisiana.dk