Great Sharks by Robert Longo. How did the idea for the exhibition come about? What do the artists Longo, Goya and Eisenstein have in common? In your interviews, you often say that you steal pictures

In the museum contemporary art"Garage" exhibition opened "Evidence": Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo. Stills from Eisenstein's films, Goya's engravings and Longo's charcoal drawings formed a black and white postmodern mix. Separately, at the exhibition you can see forty-three drawings by Eisenstein from the collection of the Russian state archive literature and art, exhibited for the first time, as well as etchings by Francisco Goya from the collection State Museum modern history Russia. ARTANDHOUSES spoke with the famous American artist Robert Longo about how difficult it was to stand on a par with the giants of art history, about the self-sufficiency of youth and his experiences in cinema.

How did the idea for the exhibition come about? What do the artists Longo, Goya and Eisenstein have in common?

Exhibition co-curator Kate Fowl heard me talk about these artists, how they inspired me and how I admired their work. She suggested that I collect our work together and make this exhibition.

I have always been interested in artists who witnessed their time and documented everything that happened. I consider it important that in the works of Eisenstein and Goya we see evidence of the eras in which they lived.

While working on the exhibition, you went to the Russian state archives. What was the most interesting thing about working with archival materials?

The museum's amazing team gave me access to places I would never have gone myself. I was struck by the archive of literature and art, its huge halls with filing cabinets. As we walked along the endless corridors, I constantly asked the employees what was in these boxes, what was in those. They once said: “And in these boxes we have Chekhov!” I was struck by the very idea of ​​Chekhov in the box.

You also met with Naum Kleiman, a leading expert on Eisenstein’s work…

I went to Kleiman for some sort of permission. I asked, what would Eisenstein think about what we are doing? Because I felt that the exhibition was quite boldly conceived. But Kleiman was very enthusiastic about the project. We can say that he approved in a certain way what we were doing. He is an amazingly lively person, fluent in English, although at first he claimed that he hardly spoke it.

Is it difficult for you to compare with Goya and Eisenstein? Is it difficult to stand on a par with the geniuses of the past?

When Kate asked me if I would like to participate in such an exhibition, I thought: what role will be assigned to me? Probably helpful. These are real giants of art history! But, in the end, we are all artists, each lived in his own era and depicted it. It's important to understand that this is Kate's idea, not mine. And what place in history I will take, we will know in a hundred years.

In your interviews, you often say that you steal pictures. What do you have in mind?

We live in a world saturated with images, and you can say that they penetrate us. And what am I doing? I'm borrowing "pictures" from this insane stream of images and placing them in a completely different context - art. I choose archetypal images while deliberately slowing them down so people can stop and think about them. We can say that all the media around us is a street with one way traffic. We are not given a chance to respond in any way. And I make an attempt to answer this diversity. Looking for images that are archetypal from antiquity. I look at the works of Goya and Eisenstein, and it strikes me that I subconsciously use in my work motives that are also found in them.

You entered the history of art as an artist from Pictures Generation. What motivated you when you started borrowing images from the media space? Was it a protest against modernism?

It was an attempt to resist the amount of images that we were surrounded by in America. There were so many images that people lost their sense of reality. I belong to the generation that grew up on television. TV was my babysitter. Art is a reflection of what we grew up with, what surrounded us in childhood. Do you know Anselm Kiefer? He grew up in post-war Germany, lying in ruins. And we see all this in his art. In my art, we see black and white images, as if they came off the TV screen, on which I grew up.

What was the role of the critic Douglas Crimp in organizing the legendary Pictures exhibition in 1977, where you participated with Sherri Levin, Jack Goldstein and others, after which you became famous?

He brought together artists. He first met Goldstein and me and realized that something interesting was going on. And he had the idea to travel around America and find artists working in the same direction. He discovered many new names. It was a gift of fate for me that at such a young age I was found by a great intellectual who wrote about my work. (Douglas Crimp's article on the new generation of artists was published in the influential American magazineOctober. - E. F.). It was important that he put into words what we wanted to express. Because we were making art, but we couldn't find the words to explain what we were depicting.

You often depict apocalyptic scenes: atomic explosions, sharks with open mouths, diving fighters. What draws you to the topic of disaster?

In art, there is a whole direction of depicting disasters. For me, an example of this genre is Gericault's painting "The Raft of the Medusa". My paintings based on disasters are something like an attempt at disarmament. Through art, I would like to get rid of the feeling of fear that these phenomena generate. Perhaps my most striking work on this topic is the work with a bullet mark, which was inspired by the events around the Charlie Hebdo magazine. On the one hand, it is very beautiful, but on the other hand, it is the embodiment of cruelty. For me, this is a way to say: “I'm not afraid of you! You can shoot me, but I will keep working! And you would go far away!

You shoot movies, video clips, played in a musical group, draw pictures. Who do you feel more like - a director, an artist or a musician?

Artist. This is the freest profession of all. When you make a movie, people pay money and think they can tell you what to do.

Are you not very happy with your film experience?

I had a difficult experience filming « Johnny Mnemonic. I originally wanted to make a small black and white sci-fi film, but the producers kept interfering. As a result, he came out about 50-70 percent the way I would like to see him. I had a plan - for the 25th anniversary of the film, edit it, make it black and white, re-edit and put it on the Internet. That would be my act of revenge on the film company!

You were a member of the artistic and musical underground in the 1970s and 80s. How do you remember those times?

With age, you understand that you are not entering the future, but the future is approaching you. The past is constantly changing in our minds. When I now read about the events of the 1970s and 80s, I think that it was not at all like that. The past is not as rosy as it is portrayed. There were also difficulties. We were without money. I went to terrible jobs, including working as a taxi driver. And yet it was beautiful time when music and art were closely linked. And we really wanted to create something new.

If you could go back in time to when you were young, what would you change?

I wouldn't do drugs. If I were talking to my young self now, I would say that in order to expand the boundaries of consciousness, you do not need stimulants, you need to work actively. It is easy to be young, it is much more difficult to live to old age. And be relevant to your time. The whole idea of ​​destruction in youth may seem cool, but it is not. And now for more than twenty years I have not drunk or used any stimulant substances.

Eisenstein was supposed to work for the government, Goya - for the king. I work for the art market. Throughout the history of art, there has been a specific customer, church or government. Interestingly, as soon as the institutions ceased to be the main customers, the artists had new problem searching for what they want to depict on canvases. Unlike the king, the art market does not dictate what exactly we need to do, so I am freer than the artists that came before me.

Goya's etchings were not made for churches or kings, so they are much closer to what I do. In the case of Eisenstein, we tried we tried to remove most political context, we slowed down the frames, leaving only the images - so we tried to get away from politics. When I was a student, I never thought about political background, about repression, about the pressure that went hand in hand with the shooting of these films. But the more I studied Eisenstein, the more I realized that he simply wanted to make films - and for this, alas, he was forced to seek state support.

When Caravaggio was in Rome, he had to work for the church. Otherwise, he simply would not have been able to paint big pictures. As a result, he was forced to retell the same stories over and over again. It's funny how it looks like a popular Hollywood movie. So we have a lot more in common with the artists of the past than we used to think, and their influence on each other can hardly be overestimated. Eisenstein himself studied the work of Goya and even created paintings that look like storyboards - here are six of them, all together they actually look like storyboards for a movie. And the etchings are even numbered.

One way or another, all artists are connected and influenced by each other. The history of art is a great weapon that helps us cope with the challenges of each new day. And personally, I also use art to get there - such is my time machine.

Francisco Goya, "The Tragic Case of a Bull Attacking the Rows of Spectators in the Arena of Madrid"

Series "Tauromachia", sheet 21

We learned that the Museum of the Revolution in Moscow keeps a complete set of Goya's etchings. It was a gift from the USSR in 1937 as a token of gratitude for helping the Spaniards in the fight against Franco. The etchings are simply unique: the last copy was made from Goya's original plates and all of them - which is simply amazing - look like they were printed yesterday. At the exhibition, we tried to avoid the most famous works- I just think that people will peer into unfamiliar works a little longer. And we chose the ones that I think almost look like film or journalism.

I even have one Goya etching at home, I bought it a long time ago. And of those presented at the exhibition, I like the one with the bull the most. The work looks exactly like a frame from a movie - everything somehow cinematically works together, a bull with a tail and people whom it seems to crash into. When I look at this work, I always think about what happened before and what will happen after this moment. Just like in the movies.

Francisco Goya, "Amazing Stupidity"

Series "Proverbs", sheet 3

Here is another work that I really like - Goya's family stands in a row, as if the birds are sitting on a tree branch. I myself have three sons, and this engraving reminds me of the family, there is something beautiful and important in it.

When I paint, I really often think about what will happen next with the characters in my painting. I often do a frame exercise, like in a comic - I sketch a lot of rectangles different sizes and experimenting with the composition inside. And Eisenstein in this sense is an excellent example to follow, his compositions are impeccable: the picture is often built around the diagonal and such a structure creates psychological tension.

Sergei Eisenstein and Grigory Alexandrov, frame from the film "Battleship Potemkin"

I love all Eisenstein's films, and from Potemkin I remember first of all this beautiful scene with boats in the harbour. The water glitters, and this makes the frame incredibly beautiful. And my most, probably, favorite frame - in a large flag and screaming Lenin. Both of these shots are truly masterpieces.

Sergei Eisenstein, frame from the film "Sentimental Romance"

In film " sentimental romance”there is an incredibly powerful shot: a woman is standing in an apartment by the window. It really looks like a painting.

And it's also very interesting for me to see what happened when we put these films side by side - in the cinema you watch scene by scene, but here you see slow-motion images different films located in the neighborhood. This strange collage, it seems to me, makes it clear how Eisenstein's brain works. In his films, the cameras did not move behind the actors, they were static, and each time he offers us well-built concrete images. Eisenstein worked at the dawn of cinema, and each frame had to be imagined in advance - in fact, to see future movie image after image.

Cinema, painting and contemporary art are one and the same: the creation of pictures. The other day I was in the museum, looking for the "Black Square" and while walking through all these halls of images and paintings, I realized something important. Main strength art is the burning desire of a human being to explain to you what it is he sees. “This is how I see it,” the artist tells us. Do you understand what I mean? Sometimes it may seem to you that the crown of a tree resembles a face, and you immediately want to tell your friend about it, ask him: “Do you see what I see?” Making art is about trying to show people how you see the world. And at the heart of this is the desire to feel alive.

Robert Longo, untitled, 2016

(The plot is connected with the tragic events in Baltimore. - Note. ed.)

I chose this image to show not only what happened, but also to explain to you what I see and feel about this myself. At the same time, of course, it was necessary to create an image that the viewer would also want to consider. And I also think that you may not read the newspapers and not know what happened, but this is wrong - it is important to see everything.

I love the painting (1819 painting by Théodore Géricault, based on the shipwreck of a frigate off the coast of Senegal. - Note. ed.) - for me this is really an amazing work about terrible disaster. Remember what it was? Of the 150 people on the raft, only 15 survived. I also try to show the beauty of disasters, and the bullet holes in my paintings are a perfect example.

I am far from politics, and ideally I would like to be able to live my life and just know that people do not suffer. But I do what I have to do - and show what I must.

I think that both of these artists were in similar situation. It is a pity that the deep ideas of Eisenstein's films have been distorted. This is similar to the situation with America: the idea of ​​democracy, which is the basis of our country, has been constantly distorted. Goya also witnessed terrible events, and he wanted to make us look at things realistically, as if to stop what was happening. He talks about slowing down the world and perception. I think I also intentionally slow things down with my images. You can turn on the computer and quickly look through thousands of images on the Internet, but I want to create them in a way that stops time and allows you to look at things more carefully. To do this, in one work, I can combine several images, as in classical art and this idea of ​​connecting the unconscious is incredibly important to me.

Robert Longo, untitled

January 5, 2015 (work - a tribute to the memory of the editors of Charlie Hebdo. - Note. ed.)

For me, this topic was extremely important, because I myself am an artist. Hebdo is a magazine where cartoonists, that is, artists, worked. What happened really shocked me: each of us could be among those people who were killed. This is not just an attack on Hebdo - it's an attack on all artists. What the terrorists wanted to say was: you shouldn't make pictures like that, so this threat actually concerns me as well.

I chose cracked glass as the basis of the image. First of all, it's beautiful - you'll want to look at it one way or another. But this is not the only reason: it reminded me of a jellyfish, some kind of organic creature. Hundreds of cracks radiate from a hole in the glass like an echo terrible event which happened. The event is in the past, but its consequences continue. It's really scary.

Robert Longo, untitled

2015 (the work is dedicated to the catastrophe of September 11. - Note. ed.)

September 11, I played basketball in one of the gyms in Brooklyn, on the 10th floor. high building and I could see everything perfectly from the window. And my studio is located near the scene of the tragedy, so I could not get there for a long time. My studio has big picture, created in honor of this terrible event - at first I just sketched a drawing on the wall of the studio, drew a plane. The same plane that flew to the first tower, I drew it on the wall. Then I had to repaint the walls of the studio, and I was very worried that the drawing would disappear, so I made another one. Please note that all my drawings in the exhibition are covered with glass - and as a result, you see your reflections in them. Airplanes crash into reflections, and parts of some of my work are reflected in each other. There are certain angles in the exhibition where you can see a bullet hole in Jesus from a certain angle, and here you see a plane crashing into something.

For me, superimposing drawings on top of each other is not just a chronology of disasters, but rather an attempt to heal. Sometimes we take poison to get better and it's important to have the courage to live with open eyes, be courageous to see some things. I'm probably not very courageous man- all men like to think that they are brave, but most of them, I think, are cowards.

I am lucky that I have the opportunity to exhibit, and I use this opportunity to talk about what I consider important. No need to create something mysterious, complex, full of narcissism. Instead, it is better to address the issues that matter now. That's what I think about the real tasks of art.

Pilots, sharks, sexy girls, dancers, the ocean, impressive explosions - this is what New York artist Robert Longo depicts ( Robert Longo). His illustrations are extremely deep, mystical, powerful and magnetic. Perhaps this effect is due to black and white pictures, which the author carefully writes out using charcoal.

Robert Longo was born in 1953 in Brooklyn, New York. Talking about himself, the artist never forgets to mention that he loves cinema, comics, magazines and has a weakness for television, which have a considerable influence on his work. Robert Longo draws most of the themes for his paintings from what he has seen and read before. The author has always loved to draw, and although he received a bachelor's degree in sculpture, this does not prevent him from doing what he loves, but on the contrary. Some of the artist's drawings are very reminiscent of sculptures, he likes those outlines that come out from under the hand. There is some power in this.

The main exhibitions of paintings by Robert Longo are held at the Museum of Art in Los Angeles, as well as at the Museum of Modern Art in Chicago.

Robert is known to a wide audience as a director cult film"Johnny Mnemonic" based on the story of cyberpunk father William Gibson. But he is also an excellent artist - and opens two exhibitions in the capital at once. The Evidence project at Garage is dedicated to the work of three authors — Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein and Longo himself, who, as a co-curator, links this multi-layered story together. And in the gallery "Triumph" will show the works of artists from his studio.

GUSKOV: Robert, Eisenstein and Goya and your works will be in the Garage. How did you put it all together?

LONGO (laughs): Well, that's what museums are for, to show different things together. (Seriously.) In fact, the idea of ​​the exhibition belongs to Kate Fowl, she is the curator. She knew that these two authors had a strong influence on me as an artist. Kate and I talked about them more than once, she understood what was happening, and two years ago she offered me this story.

GUSKOV: What do you all have in common?

LONGO: First of all, we are all witnesses of the time in which we live or lived, and this is very important.

GUSKOV: Are you an equal participant in this story with Eisenstein and Goya?

LONGO: No, Kate gave me the opportunity to influence the exhibition. Usually the artists are not included in the project: the curators just take your works and tell you what to do. And here I came to Russia twice, studied archives, museum collections.

GUSKOV: What do you think of Garage?

LONGO (admiringly): This is very unusual place. I wish there was something similar in the States. What Kate Fowl and Dasha do in Garage (Zhukova. - Interview), just amazing. As for the exhibition, Eisenstein and Goya and I have one important common feature- graphic arts. Eisenstein's is incredibly beautiful. Kate helped me get into RGALI, where his works are kept. They are very similar to storyboards, but, in principle, they are independent works.

"UNTITLED (PENTECOST)", 2016.

GUSKOV: The graphics of Eisenstein, like those of Goya, are rather gloomy.

LONGO: Yes, mostly black and white. Gloom is also a common characteristic for the three of us. That is, of course, there are other colors in Goya's paintings, but here we are talking about his etchings. In general, it is very difficult to beg for his work for the exhibition. We searched for different museums, but one of Keith's assistants learned that the Museum of Modern Russian History has a complete selection of Goya's etchings, which was donated to the Soviet government in 1937 in honor of the anniversary of the revolution. The most wonderful thing that was last edition made from authentic author's boards. They look so fresh like they were made yesterday.

GUSKOV: By the way, cinema is also part of your work. Did Eisenstein influence you so much that you decided to make films?

LONGO: Quite right. I first saw his films when I was in my twenties and they blew my mind. But for me, as an American, it was difficult to catch the political subtext. At that time, we did not really understand how Soviet propaganda worked. But putting that aspect aside, the films themselves are simply amazing.

GUSKOV: Did you, like Eisenstein, also not have everything going smoothly with the cinema?

LONGO: Yeah. Of course, I didn't have to deal with Stalin when I made Johnny Mnemonic, but all those Hollywood assholes made me sick. They tried their best to ruin the movie.

GUSKOV: Damn producers!

LONGO: Can you imagine?! When I started working on the film, my friend Keanu Reeves, who starred in it, was not yet so famous. But then Speed ​​came out and he became a superstar. And now the movie is ready, and the producers decide to make it a "summer blockbuster". (Indignantly.) Launch it on the same weekend as the next "Batman" or "Die Hard". What can I say, I had a budget of 25 million dollars, and these films had a hundred each. Naturally, Johnny Mnemonic failed at the box office. Besides than more money swell to make a blockbuster, the worse the result. Of course, they could fire me without any problems, but I stayed and tried to keep somewhere around 60 percent of the original idea. And yes (pauses) I wanted the film to be black and white.

GUSKOV: You wanted to make an experimental movie, but you were prevented. Are your hands tied at the exhibition?

LONGO: Certainly. My idea is that artists capture time like reporters. But here is such a problem. For example, my friend has five thousand pictures on his iPhone, and this amount is hard to comprehend. And imagine: you enter the hall, where films by Eisenstein are shown in slow motion. The movie is no longer perceived as a whole, but you can see how perfect each frame is. The same with Goya - he has more than 200 etchings. The audience's eyes will glaze over from such a number, so we chose a few dozen that most coincide in mood with me and Eisenstein. It's the same with my work: Kate made a rigorous selection.

GUSKOV: A Mass culture had a strong influence on you?

LONGO: Yes. I am 63 years old, I am from the first generation that grew up with television. In addition, I had dyslexia, I began to read only after thirty. Now I read a lot, but then I looked at pictures more. This is what made me who I am. In my school years Protests began against the Vietnam War. One guy I studied with died at the University of Kent in 1970, where soldiers shot students. I still remember the photo in the newspaper. My wife, the German actress Barbara Zukova, was very frightened to find out how stuck these images were in my head.

GUSKOV: How did you come up with the graphics?

LONGO: It is important for me that work, months of work, is invested in my works, and not just pressing a button. People do not immediately understand that this is not a photo.

GUSKOV: For Eisenstein, his drawings, like films, were a way of therapy to cope with neuroses and phobias, to curb desires. And for you?

LONGO: I think yes. Some peoples and tribes similar cases shamans do. I understand it this way: a person goes crazy, locks himself in his dwelling and starts creating objects. And then he goes out and shows art to people who are also suffering, and they feel better. Through art, artists heal themselves, and the by-product is helping others. It certainly sounds stupid (laughs), but it seems to me that we are modern healers.

GUSKOV: Or preachers.

LONGO: And art is my religion, I believe in it. At least people don't get killed in his name.

Robert Longo was born in 1953 in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up on Long Island. As a child on him big influence popular culture had the effect of film, television, magazines, and comics, which largely shaped his artistic style.

In the late 1970s, Longo performed experimental punk music in New York City rock clubs for Robert Longo's Menthol Wars. He is a co-founder of the avant-garde group X-Patsys (with his wife Barbara Zukova, Jon Kessler, Knox Chandler, Sean Conley, Jonathan Kane and Anthony Coleman).

In the 1980s, Longo directed several music videos, including the song The One I Love by R.E.M. , Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order and Peace Sells by Megadeth.

In 1992, the artist acted as the director of one of the episodes of the series "Tales from the Crypt" called "This will kill you" (This'll Kill Ya). The most famous of director's work Longo - 1995 film