October 18, 2017, 7pm
47-49 East 65th Street
New York, NY
USA
The Hunter College Department of Art and Art History is pleased to announce a public lecture by Robert Longo as part of the fall 2017 Judith Zabar Visiting Artist Series, Wednesday, October 18, 2017, 7pm at Hunter’s Roosevelt House, 47-49 East 65th St in Manhattan.
Robert Longo is a New York-based artist, filmmaker, and musician. Born in 1953, Longo moved to New York in 1977, and that same year, was one of the five artists included in the now legendary exhibition Pictures, curated by Douglas Crimp at Artists Space. Pictures was the first exhibition to present the work of a group of younger artists turning away from Minimal and Conceptual Art toward image-making practices inspired by newspapers, advertisements, film, and television. Over the next decade, Longo became a leading protagonist of what came to be known as the “Pictures Generation,” working in drawing, photography, painting, sculpture, performance, and film to create works that posed provocative critiques of the anaesthetizing and seductive effects of capitalism, mediatized wars, and the cult of history in the US. Since the 1990s, Longo has been pushing the limits of the charcoal medium, producing monumental, hyper-real charcoal on paper drawings on a scale that competes with that of sculpture.
Robert Longo has been represented by Metro Pictures—the first New York commercial gallery to champion the Pictures Generation artists—since they opened in 1980. His work is currently featured in the exhibition Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo, on view at the Brooklyn Museum from September 8, 2017 through January 7, 2018. In conjunction with his residency as a Zabar Visiting Artist, he has installed American Bridge Project on Hunter College’s main campus on East 68th Street. The public work spreads images taken from his large-scale charcoal drawings—of the First Amendment to the Constitution and the American flag—across Lexington Avenue on Hunter’s iconic sky bridges. American Bridge Project is curated by Jill Brienza with Sarah Watson, and is on view through December 1, 2017.
Zabar Visiting Artist talks are free and open to the public. Seating is limited and an RSVP is required.
About the Judith Zabar Visiting Artists Program
Since November 2007, the Judith Zabar Visiting Artist Program Fund has enabled Hunter College to bring a series of internationally recognized artists to campus to work directly with students in the MFA program, in master classes, critical seminars, and private tutorials, providing students with the unique opportunity to interact with top practitioners in the field. Zabar Visiting Artists also present public lectures where they discuss their work and engage in conversation with members of Hunter’s faculty, our broader student community, and the general public.
Past Zabar artists have included: Vito Acconci, Janine Antoni, Julie Ault, Robert Barry, Mel Chin, Peter Doig, Nicole Eisenman, Charles Gaines, Alfredo Jaar, Joan Jonas, Martin Kersels, Jeff Koons, Glenn Ligon, Sharon Lockhart, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Christian Marclay, Kerry James Marshall, Tracey Moffatt, Matt Mullican, Wangechi Mutu, Gabriel Orozco, Laura Owens, Trevor Paglen, Elizabeth Peyton, Paul Pfeiffer, William Pope L., Walid Ra’ad, Yvonne Rainer, Doris Salcedo, Shahzia Sikander, Fred Tomaselli, Nari Ward, Carrie Mae Weems, and Stanley Whitney.
