Robert Longo is widely known for his highly detailed and hyper-realistic charcoal drawings that
explore the construction of power symbols. He explores the implications of living in an
image-saturated culture-how we filter process and preserve the images we are confronted with
on a daily basis. This catalogue accompanies the exhibition Robert Longo: The Acceleration of
History at the Milwaukee Art Museum and focuses on Longo's works of the last ten years
including images of war protest movements immigration and climate change created in direct
response to contemporary global events and drawn from images widely circulated through various
media sources. ROBERT LONGO (b. 1953) is an artist filmmaker and musician living in New
York. He is considered a key figure of the US "Pictures Generation " which used appropriation
and montage in the 1980s to unmask stereotypes in visual culture and to criticize the
mediatization of war and the excessive glorification of history. With his labor-intensive
large-format charcoal drawings Longo aims to slow down the consumption of the images that
inundate us daily through our screens or what the artist calls the "storm of images."
