College Term Paper
Robert Longo
While the history of photography is on the one hand the history of its
technological development, it is also the story of its practitioners' endeavors
to achieve for their medium the status accorded to fine art. Photography was
born of science and art, and its uniqueness is linked to both fields. When the
daguerreotype was brought before the French legislature in 1839, its promoters
visualize artists able to "surpass the most accomplished painters in fidelity of
detail and true reproduction of the local atmosphere."1
However, once the preliminary amazement settled, the most up-to-date child of
the industrial revolution was quickly put to practical and commercial use,
achieving automatically what was previously done manually, providing a fast and
cheap means of recording the appearances of persons, topographical views,
archaeological sites, botanical specimens, and man-made structures, and for
replicating hand-made prints.
Order Your
Term Papers, College Essays and Research Papers
Photography seemed inevitable to be strongly connected with painting. Its
inventors were not only scientists, but also artists’ aiming on compensating for
their incapacity to draw well. Their lenses were views according to the demands
of picture making.
Many would argue that photography persuaded painters to follow abstract and
personal styles as a way to distinguish their art from the obviously
photographic. Indeed, photography was a marvelous motivation to pragmatism.
Striving for naturalistic accuracy, painters consulted photographic studies from
nature, employing to changeable amount, material thus obtain. A list of famous
examples includes Ingres' portraits, which so noticeably look like major
daguerreotypes.
Delacroix based a number of his figures on photographs, and himself experimented
in numerous forms of photography, regretting that "such a wonderful invention"
had not been made earlier in his career. Courbet and Millet collected
photographs for reference in painting light and shading, and as great a
attraction as Manet's Olympia (1865) has been shown, by Gerald Needham, to have
been derived from a pornographic photograph of the period. Degas copied
locomotion studies by Edweard Muybridge in order to illustrate the actual
position of a horse's legs in full gallop. Eakins is known to have taken
hundreds of photographs, many of which supplied him with motifs for his
paintings. And the Pre-Raphaelite's, adhering to Ruskinian ideology, attended to
nature's details with the help of the camera. The examples are of large numbers.
In spite of its advantages for the artist, photographs were never exhibited
within mid-nineteenth-century fine art exhibitions. Photography was considered a
mechanical procedure and was consign to the Industrial segment of exhibition.
However, since painters demanded photographic views of landscape particulars and
of nude or costumed models for allusion, photographic variety were born. Even
flawed, independent photography attracted towards the custom of painted images
and conformed to its principles. In any case, while it is definitely a
mechanical recording process, photography is a picture-making process too.
Furthermore, the admiration of photographs requires a pictorial awareness that
shares much with the admiration of paintings and the graphic arts.
Robert Longo became identical with American pictorial art during the 80s, his
motivated major works apparently matched with the thriving economy and dynamic
ideals of the Reagan era. Yet while Longo's work is on a grand scale, the
combination of different elements within each piece undermines the potential for
monumentality. Instead of recognition and admiration, his works call for an
interpretative attempt on the part of the observer: one must gather the pieces
if he is to make a reading, the dissimilar parts within the work being
highlighted by the factual and figurative spaces in between. Moreover, by
working closely with the mass media type of film and television, Longo strived
to maintain the evaluation of painting's educational position - a redefinition
that Pop Art had dramatically started. Distinguished by skilful draftsmanship
and expert handling of various materials, his works have modified the pompous
approach of mass media in order to function with a comparable frequency.
Furthermore, Longo has tried to work in a new direction, taking art's know-how
into the sphere of feature film production. Between 1977 and 1981, Longo made
sculptural, pictorial and presentation work, developing ideas that would return
in later work. For example, in Performance Empire, from 'The Performance
Trilogy' (1978-81), a pair of dancers moves in slow motion. Images of figures
caught in an instant of movement are perhaps the main pattern within Longo's
work. After graduation Longo showed in 1979 at The Kitchen, a downtown space
that encouraged artistic trailing and teamwork. In the subsequent year, he had
his first one-person exhibition in Europe, at Studio d'Arte Cannaviello in
Milan.
Order Your
Term Papers, College Essays and Research Papers
His first solo exhibition at Metro Pictures, New York, in 1981 brought him
worldwide critical praise. This installation of Men in the Cities presented his
charcoal, graphite and dye studies of office workers, mix together with cast
aluminum reliefs of terrible architectural structures. The impressive grand
images incite an unsure reaction: it is impossible to distinguish whether the
lonely figures are disturbed or excited.
The introduction of three-dimensional reliefs into a series of flat images was
part of Longo's approach to re-describe the limits of pictorial practice. This
disruption of a flat linear reading, particularly used in Dada and Surrealist
collection, challenge hypothesis, whether they be cultural, social or political.
In 'Men in the Cities' Longo cuts unidentified people from their environments,
then join their picture with blocks of buildings. The relationship is made
between the confidential and the commercial, the person and the industrial, the
weak and the impermeable. With increase level, Longo continued to include the
pictorial and the sculptural in combines that mark the human body trapped in
either clash or running away. In Angels for a Modern World (1981), sculpted
torsos emerge from the top of smooth vertical panels, whilst in The Wrestlers
(1978) two bodies embrace in combat. They emerge from the flat screen
background, the surface sheen of their modeled contours differentiating their
bodies from the plane of entertainment and distraction, and thrusting their
selves into our space of existence and physical interaction.
Commitment with the social and political can be seen in Longo's work during the
80s, setting him apart from fellow artists David Salle and Julian Schnabel. In
Corporate Wars: Walls of Influence (1982) two panels of smooth prisms
vivaciously swerve from the mid relief, their dizzying angles signifying
Futurist designs. The cast aluminum panel features twisted bodies of office
staff, destined to struggle and fight with each other.
A warning take on American life is also exhibited in the five panels of the 1983
work, Love Police: Engines in Us (The Doors) with the Golden Children. The
transfer of sleek red automobile paint to the parents’ portrait, signifying that
their social entity has the facade of a commodity, dilutes ordinary thoughts of
family life. In the meantime, the backside of consumerism crumble under them:
the aluminum of the cast relocating the product back in the physical world.
Longo has expressed his work as existing between the movie and the monument:
having worked with monumental level as a critical tool, it appears reasonable
that he turned his attention to the feature films.
Longo had not only worked with video and film before, but had discussed making a
film entitled Empire/Steel Angel, from which he could take stills in order to
make a new body of sculpture. In 1995, Johnny Mnemonic was released, the height
of Longo's association with the cyber novelist William Gibson. By undermining
the standard of action films, Longo and Gibson made a movie that could function
on the same circumstances as Rambo and Total Recall, even as altering the style.
Following a main display at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1989, Longo
began to focus on single themes, rather than mosaic of associations. Moreover,
he moved to Paris the following year. The 'Black Flag' series resulted from this
alteration in direction, and location. Taking the Stars and Stripes as his
subject, Longo modified the handling of the spangled banner by Pop artist Jasper
Johns.
Order Your
Term Papers, College Essays and Research Papers
Longo created Black Flag (When the Hurlyburly's done) (1990), a monolithic
wooden flag with the capacity to physically bisect a gallery; hanging flags
draped on flag poles in black bronze, such as A Tale Told by an Idiot (1990);
and, also in bronze, a series of unfurled flags in the wind, such as The Insane
Root (1990). In 1991, Longo created pieces depicted as abstract logos: simple
shapes which clearly evaluates that which they have come to signify. One such
work, Untitled (Monument to the Sixties) (1991) includes a white pentagon
suspended from the ceiling by wires so that it fly above the floor. Its
structure suggests that the headquarters of Reagan's 'Star Wars' program may not
be unbeatable, but dependent for its stability on external forces.
In the late 90s, Longo made a body of work moved by the comic book characters
favored by his children. Subtitling his work, founded on these new superheroes,
'Dolls on Steroids', Longo photographed the action figures, heading their feebly
enhanced brawny and prosthetic devices. The huge photographs present the toys at
an amazing degree, the brightly masked expressions frowning and growling, ready
for Great War.
The Surrealists
Many The Surrealists used photography to show that things are not as they come
into view. With magical effects including multiple exposure, collage,
combination printing, oblique angles, close-ups, camera-less images, and
polarization, they made time and space seem malleable and fantastic.
Photography's air of true-life made hidden dreams seems a believable part of the
visible world.
Edward Weston was a purist who rejected all forms of exploitation in
photography. He directed a move away from structural design toward a natural
art, stating to challenge "the recording of the very quintessence and
interdependence of all life."2
This influenced Imogene Cunningham, Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke, and others
who in 1932 formed F.64, a photographic society based in San Francisco. Unlike
Weston, whose work advocates the clarity and abstract sense of nature, Adams'
inspiring scenes of the vast landscapes, creating some of the most unforgettable
images of the American countryside.
In the late 1920s, the compact 35 mm cameras with improved viewfinders and up to
a dozen exposures per load were helpful in the growth of the field of
photojournalism. While in New York, Bernice Abbott and Helen Levitt documented
New York in a journalistic manner, in Europe; Henri Cartier-Bresson used his
Leica to more graphic ends, in quest of what he called "the decisive moment" at
which a masterpiece comes into perfect symmetry.3
Social and artistic forms of photography bonded in the work of two photographers
engaged in the 1930s by the Farm Services Administration: Dorothea Lange and
Walker Evans. As Lewis Hine had expressed worldwide subjects in his social
documentary series of immigrants arriving on Ellis Island (1904), Lange's and
Evans' direct, open-eyed images are not only vital documents of the Depression
era, they are also colossal symbols of sympathy. In the late 1950s and 1960s,
the responsibility of this custom passed to Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Diane
Arbus, Bruce Davidson, and Garry Winogrand, each of whom explored the American
panorama in all its peculiarity and paradox.
A century and a half after its invention, it is really difficult to imagine the
world without photography. The amount of photographic images in our surroundings
has been increased exponentially by a nonstop series of commercial, scientific,
and artistic uses. Photographs, both still and cinematic, have become essential
gears of our public and private lives.
While photographers today are less likely than painters to be referred to as
"artists," photographs regularly hang in our museums and galleries, and grasp
high prices from diligent collectors -- the medium is unanimously regarded as
one of the fine arts. Indeed, from its origin, there have been practitioners of
photography whose work comprises visual art. However, there is no agreement as
to what composes photographic art. Visual art, being the product of human
action, must share that is definitely human -- namely the capability to think
and to feel. Therefore, visual art comprises those images, which arouse the mind
or the emotions, pass on ideas or connected responses (whether enjoyable or
upsetting) by means of physical portrayal, academic representation, or abstract
design.
Order Your
Term Papers, College Essays and Research Papers
We further need visual art because it conveys beauty. This rather virtual and
individually determined feature consists of the pleasant harmony between art
comprises those pictures that gratify the criteria of the parts, and the
suitability of the visual means to a meaningful end. What are inherent to
photography are first, its registration of light on a photosensitive material,
and second, the artist's selection and control of the graphic essentials. In
order to be changed into photographic art, the apparent world must be seen
creatively. Salvador Dali is perhaps the best known artist from the surrealist
art scene, but he is not just a surrealist; his works have covered many diverse
styles from impressionism to his own take on the classical style, and all reveal
his mastery of the medium.
His painting "metamorphosis of Narcissus" is a masterpiece. It is spellbinding.
The pragmatism of this strange scene is enchanting. Completed in 1937, this
painting now hangs in the Tate Gallery, London, and is perhaps one of, if not
the greatest work by Salvador Dali. It is based around the theme of the Greek
mythological character Narcissus, a youth who fell in love with his own
reflection in a pool of water. This painting, as with all of Dali's paintings,
can be analyzed and interpreted on many levels. This work can be compared with
Longo’s Corporate Wars: Walls of Influence (1982). Salvador Dali’s paintings
like Longo’s pierce the very foundation of the subconscious and like the scalpel
of a master surgeon, exposes "the three aspects of life: the sexual impulse, the
feeling of death, and the agony of space-time."4
There is an otherworldly excellence in Dali's works, which many surrealists have
endeavored to attain without achievement. His technique of photographic realism,
and the particular cinematic style he adopted, involves the viewer too
intimately for his own relieve. Every painting is like a brilliant and living
dream or a fantasy. Once seen, it is not simply forgotten. The outcome is not
always enjoyable, and it is not meant to be so. Dali opens the door to an
unusual height of awareness, where we can not only see but also feel the effects
of war, death, famine, religion, and the general struggle of life at every level
in the twentieth century.
The significant aspect, which raises Dali above many other artists, is that in
his art as well as his life, he was realistic to his obsessions, holding nothing
back, and as a result; the complete man is present in every painting. Both Longo
and Dali found painting, the instrument through which they could record their
subconscious thoughts and impressions for the evaluation of the physical eye in
the third dimension. Dali already worked as an impressionist, and then a cubist,
he found his true self in surrealism, and joined the Paris Surrealist Group in
1929. However, he soon realized that his vision was different to those around
him, and quickly tired of the group, once saying; "The difference between the
Surrealists and me is that I am a Surrealist."5
One of Dali's initial works in the field, and perhaps one of his most famous, is
The Persistence of Memory. Dali soon came to be regarded as the leader of the
surrealist movement. Dali’s work during the early 1940s showed the artists
preoccupation with religion, and science; perhaps, he found much inspiration
within its conflicting views. This came to be known as his "classic" period.
Dali was welcomed with open arms by Hollywood, where he provided ideas and
artwork for a dream sequence in Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound". Dali’s
innovative ideas in movies can be compared with Longo’s Johnny Mnemonic,
changing the action scene of the movies.Both Dali and Longo would be remembered
and fêted as geniuses who are unique in their respected fields; daring and
sincere in exposing what lies within the psyche. With their brushes and vivid
graphics they captured images, which take the observer to new spheres of
outlook.
Endnotes
1. Art Arena Article
2. “Dali, the Liberator of The Subconscious” http://64.4.36.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=eef09694fe9bfa2ee6c8997038cfa49e&lat=1036671463&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2eart%2darena%2ecom%2fdali1%2ehtml
3. Salvador Dali, 1904-1989, http://64.4.36.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=c274e2ef32ec259ecfd3b8bd8a351e8b&lat=1036671425&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2efamouspainter%2ecom%2fsalvador%2ehtm
4. Robert Longo, Born in Brooklyn, 1953, http://64.4.22.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=8766cecc3fa0e4b6ca6de2848839c4ab&lat=1036595271&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2eeyestorm%2ecom%2ffeature%2fED2n_article%2easp%3farticle_id%3d89%26artist_id%3d770
Order Your
Term Papers, College Essays and Research Papers
