
Artist Robert Longo and Henry Rollins speak during The Un-Private Collection: Robert Longo and Henry Rollins, an art talk presented by The Broad museum and held at The Orpheum Theatre on Tuesday, May 17, 2016, in Los Angeles, Calif. | Photo: Sandoval Media/The Broad. | Click the image to watch the full conversation.
In partnership with The Broad: The Un-Private Collection is a talk series, featuring unexpected pairings of cultural leaders and influential artists in the Broad collections, taking place at venues around Los Angeles.
As part of The Broad Museums The Un-Private Collection series, renowned artist Robert Longo chatted with his long time friend and musician/ journalist Henry Rollins in Downtown Los Angeles on May 17, 2016. They discussed Longos Men in the Cities series and his artistic process.
What follows is a condensed transcript of their conversation.
Henry Rollins: Robert, I know you've been asked about this series like a hundred times but I'll make this really brief. Many of you have seen these images of these well-dressed men and women who look like they've been hit by some massive invisible fist or they're having some kind of glorious seizure. You're the creator of this work so I would like to ask you what's your intent and what you wanted to get across in the Men in the Cities series.
Robert Longo: The thing is as an artist you have to figure out what are the images that you're going to make. One of the things that was interesting as a kid growing up was watching how James Cagney died in a movie just by going, Uhh. As a kid, I played a game called Who Could Fall Dead the Best. That was a game where one guy pretends to have a gun and the other kids run at you and you shoot. Whoever dies the best gets to be the guy with the gun. You following me?
Anyway, we were part of this thing called the Pictures Generation, [creating] some bullshit appropriations. I found this image from a still from a [Rainer Werner] Fassbinder film called The American Soldier. It was this image of a guy being shot and I made a cast aluminum relief of it. It was in this show called Pictures. This piece got an enormous amount of attention.
I realized people were paying attention to that piece, and they weren't paying attention to the bands I was playing in, the performances I would do and things like that. So I decided to dump everything else and really focus on Men in the Cities, which the title comes from a combination of Alice in the Cities, the [Wim] Wenders' film, and the record called In the City [by The Jam].
Artist Robert Longo and Henry Rollins speak during The Un-Private Collection: Robert Longo and Henry Rollins, an art talk presented by The Broad museum and held at The Orpheum Theatre on Tuesday, May 17, 2016, in Los Angeles, Calif. | Photo: Sandoval Media/The Broad.
I couldn't find any pictures in magazines anymore, so I thought instead what I'll do is start photographing my friends. The clothes that we were wearing at the time were much more severe than the traditional punk stuff that everyone was wearing. Basically, like shorts and ties then lapels, stovepipe pants and things like that. I got my friends to wear basically the stuff they normally wore and I would take them up on the roof of my studio that was down by the Brooklyn Bridge and I would throw stuff at them and take photographs of them.
I would shoot tons of pictures to find one picture that was really great. The thing was I was looking for a psychotic impulse.
HR: I have a question, two questions actually about your process and I want to bring up a photo called The Bullet Hole and Broken Window which from what I understand was taken from the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. What I want to ask you is what is your process, your emotional commitment to going from a photo of something that awful and having to spend hours, days, weeks, bringing that to bear? What are you going through in this process?
RL: As an artist, I don't want to be political by choice. I mean, I feel I'm compelled to. When I saw this image I thought about the great tradition that happens in art, of people making great art from catastrophes.
I thought how history hasn't changed that much but I saw this image and I thought about the moment of impact versus how long This became an issue of how long did it take to draw a bullet hole versus how long it took to make the bullet hole. The idea of seeing beauty in this thing was really important to me and at the same time, I wanted to deal with the shock of it. I wanted you to look at something and think it was really beautiful and at the same time realize, Holy shit. This is really crazy. I mean, that was really important to me.
What happens is I end up, for lack of really horrible way of describing it, I tend to beautify it. I try to make it even more beautiful than it is because I want to make it more seductive for you to get into it so that then you go, Whoa. What the fuck am I looking at? I think that's really important that you have this moment where you all of a sudden go, I'm thinking this bullet hole is really beautiful. I think it's really important to me and this happens a lot when I work.
Robert Longo, Untitled (Bullet Hole in Window, January 7, 2015), 2015-2016. Charcoal on mounted paper. 193 x 363.2 cm. (76 x 143 in.) | Image: Courtesy of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.
HR: The great writer, Hubert Selby Jr. once characterized himself as a scream looking for a mouth. Have you ever had a situation where you had a feeling or some artistic compulsion but you had no image to attach it to? You're just looking for a place to put that energy but you had no image to affix that intent to. If you had that situation, how do you get out of it?
RL: [Laughs] Then I'd be really fucked.
HR: Has that ever happe
Most recent headlines
13/03/2025
WASHINGTON FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced that the agency has launched a massive, new deregulatory initiative that could potentially subject virtually all ...
13/03/2025
SUNNYVALE, Calif. SDVI has announced that it has integrated its Rally media supply chain management platform with the Spectra Vail multi-cloud data management s...
13/03/2025
ATLANTA Gray Media has announced that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted a waiver of its local ownership rules to permit Gray Media to acqu...
13/03/2025
TV Tech: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2025 NAB Show?...
13/03/2025
Watch Student Naomi Soleils Folk Pop Performance on The Voice The songwriting major sang Stars by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals during the blind auditions.
...
13/03/2025
Bundle up - GeForce NOW is bringing a flurry of Blizzard titles to its ever-expanding library.
Prepare to weather epic gameplay in the cloud, tackling the genr...
13/03/2025
AI is leveling up the world's most beloved games, as the latest advancements...
13/03/2025
PC game modding is massive, with over 5 billion mods downloaded annually. Mods p...
12/03/2025
O Spotify acaba de lan ar o relat rio Loud & Clear deste ano, uma vis o transpar...
12/03/2025
Spotify acaba de presentar el informe Loud & Clear de este a o, una mirada trans...
12/03/2025
Ramadan, a period of profound spiritual significance for Muslims worldwide, is a time for fasting, prayer, reflection, and community. Enrich your experience thi...
12/03/2025
Spotify has just unveiled this year's Loud & Clear report, a transparent loo...
12/03/2025
More than 70% of FAST programming has been produced since 2010, according to new Gracenote report
NEW YORK March 12, 2025 Gracenote, the content data busin...
12/03/2025
GEONA, Nev. Independent digital and linear advertising rep firm Viamedia will adopt cloud-based ShowSeeker Pilot as its primary ad campaign and order management...
12/03/2025
BRUSSELS Mediagenix has announced that Wael Yasin has joined the company as sales director Central Europe....
12/03/2025
LONDON A new study highlights opportunities for shoppable TV and the massive impact online consumer spending is having on the economy, with Omdia predicting tha...
12/03/2025
CUPERTINO, Calif. Interra Systems has announced that Comcast Technology Solutions has integrated recent updates to BATON Version 9 into its operations....
12/03/2025
Nevion announces new 400G addition to its eMerge SDN media fabric offering
Brie Clayton March 12, 2025
0 Comments
High-capacity switch enhances existi...
12/03/2025
DaVinci Resolve Studio Delivers Cinematic Sound for Adam Bol
Brie Clayton March 12, 2025
0 Comments
Feature film relies on DaVinci Resolve Studio for ...
12/03/2025
SVT Leverages Ateliere Live to Pioneer 100% Software-Defined Production at Rally...
12/03/2025
Berklee Awards Fenway Neighborhood Improvement Grant to Four Organizations A total of $17,000 will be distributed among the Boston-based nonprofits.
By
Madd...
12/03/2025
TVBEuropes Jenny Priestley sits down with new SMPTE president Richard Welsh to discuss his aims for the organisation going forward, its efforts to attract a you...
12/03/2025
The new process has significantly enhanced operational efficiencies, with automation freeing up creators to concentrate on higher value tasks
By Matthew Corrig...
12/03/2025
Jellyfish Pictures, which has offices in London and Sheffield, said it has been battling hard in the face of strong headwinds over the last 12 months
By Jenny ...
12/03/2025
Visit Booth #W2213 to Experience the Latest in AI-Driven Content Discovery and Workflow Automation
Bitcentral, a leader in media workflow solutions, is set to ...
12/03/2025
CHICAGO Jeff Lilly has been named WGN-TV director of technology effective March 17, 2025, according to Ric Harris, WGN-TV vice president and general manager....
12/03/2025
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. A new study from LG Ad Solutions indicates that consumers want more features that would allow them to shop for products on the connected T...
12/03/2025
BOTHELL, Wash. The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) and the Video Services Forum (VSF) will once again present...
12/03/2025
PHILADELPHIA Comcast announced that it has upgraded Xfinity Internet speeds for more than 20 million customers for no additional cost....
12/03/2025
Create with Maxon: Cinema 4D Fundamentals Workshop - March 12-14
Brie Clayton March 11, 2025
0 Comments
Makin' Waffles with Elly Wade
During Marc...
12/03/2025
Ottawa, Canada - March 12, 2025 - Ross Video is pleased to announce the appointment of Aaron Tunnell as Business Development Director, Cloud Solutions, reinforc...
12/03/2025
12 Mar 2025
VEON to release 4Q 2024 trading update on 20 March 2025 Dubai, 12 March 2025 - VEON Ltd. (NASDAQ: VEON), a global digital operator, today confirms ...
12/03/2025
Getting set for the Winter Olympics: Inside SVT's ongoing software-based pro...
12/03/2025
THE PLAYERS Championship 2025: AI Commentary, Shared-Reality Viewing at COSM, La...
12/03/2025
Seamless SMPTE 2110: A Discussion on Making the Move to IP Less Painful Leaders from Netflix, Monumental Sports & Entertainment, LinkedI, and Megapixel address ...
12/03/2025
Opening Doors of Perception: Meta's Ajit Ninan on Rethinking AR/MR Perceptua...
12/03/2025
With the 2025 Formula 1 season set to begin in Melbourne on March 16, Sky Sports is gearing up to deliver its most comprehensive F1 coverage yet. Following a th...
12/03/2025
Unicanal and Trece TV revolutionize Digital TV in Paraguay with Rohde & Schwarz ...
12/03/2025
Honoring Service, Celebrating Sport: Rohde & Schwarz UK Sponsors NavyFit Rugby D...
12/03/2025
New HVS-Q12 Represents a Quantum Leap in Switcher Design...
12/03/2025
Telespazio and ABS Expand Partnership to Deliver Tailored C-Band Connectivity So...
12/03/2025
ABC conducts independent audits across the TAG programs. In the March 2025 TAG s...
12/03/2025
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Moonlight: ESA program to create a satellite con...
12/03/2025
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
In 2025, Thales ranks among the top 0.01% of the...
12/03/2025
Consumer show back following hugely successful first series
10 March 2025 Following a hugely successful first series, The Complaints Bureau returns to RT ...
11/03/2025
By Lucy Spicer
One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival...
11/03/2025
Salsa is making a comeback, captivating new listeners with its infectious energy...
11/03/2025
For many people, music can serve as a reflection of their roots and upbringing. ...
11/03/2025
The solution delivers reliable, scalable and secure connectivity for critical pu...
11/03/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced that Weigel Broadcasting has deployed Harmonics VOS Media Software, which offers playout-to-delivery capabilities, inclu...