Browse online, and a lot of fine artists can create photorealistic drawings. Barely any can combine that with depth and drama like Roberto Longo. The Albertina has a solo exhibition for this US great.
- Features Longo’s colossal charcoal drawings
- Tension and impact in light and dark
- Runs Sept 4, 2024 to Jan 26, 2025
- See also:
- Albertina overview
- Art exhibitions in Vienna
Light, dark & charcoal
(Robert Longo, Untitled (Raft at Sea), 2016–2017, charcoal on paper; Siegfried and Jutta Weishaupt Collection © Robert Longo / Bildrecht, Vienna 2024; photo: Robert Longo Studio)
Photorealistic art has a breathtaking impact as a reflection of the creator’s skill.
But far fewer take this to another level: combining hyperrealism with something extra. Perhaps a visual tension, a dynamism or drama…a mesmerising quality or a subtle commentary. (Or several of the above.)
The Albertina’s Helnwein exhibition, for example, left me scratching my head at the artist’s remarkable ability to combine technique with creativity and that elusive genius that sets the best apart from those of us “merely” giving our best.
And the Albertina repeats the trick in 2024/2025 with a solo exhibition for the US artist Robert Longo, whose works sit in such collections as those of New York’s MoMA or London’s Tate.
The exhibition features a number of Longo’s monumental charcoal drawings, which transform and translate photographic images into a new media with a chiaroscuro and realism that intensifies the dramatic effect.
(Robert Longo, Untitled (Copenhagen, February 14th, 2015), 2017, charcoal on paper; private collection in Germany © Robert Longo / Bildrecht, Vienna 2024; photo: Robert Longo Studio)
And all implemented with the consummate skill of a master of his art.
As I walked around, I saw numerous people admiring a work then moving in closer, as if unable to believe it’s just charcoal and paper.
In an interview with Musée magazine, Longo describes his approach as sculptural:
The way the drawing comes to life is by erasing, carving the image out of it.
That background adds another layer of depth (literally and figuratively) to the outcome.
Depth is a word I keep coming back to when viewing the images. Along with a hard-to-describe visceral quality that demands your attention. No banality here.
(Robert Longo, Untitled (Exterior Apartment Door with Nameplate and Peephole, May 1938), 2002, 243.8 × 152.4cm, charcoal on mounted paper; the ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna | © Robert Longo / Bildrecht, Vienna 2024; Photo: Robert Longo Studio)
An example is the Untitled (Raft at Sea) pictured at the top of this post and which dominates an entire wall of the exhibition.
The work combines the dark brooding power of the ocean with the fragility of human life, highlights social injustice through the dinghy filled with refugees, and harks back to art history with its echoes of Géricault’s 1818/1819 The Raft of the Medusa.
I found Longo’s drawings of ocean waves as seen in Raft at Sea and, for example, 2001’s Untitled (Face) quite spellbinding.
We even get a splash of Vienna among the 48 works.
Longo’s Freud cycle manages to turn “simple” images from 1938 of Sigmund Freud’s apartment into expressions of absence (of Freud) and presence (of the Nazi threat).
Dates, tickets & tips
Enjoy Longo’s genius from September 4th, 2024 to January 26th, 2025. An entrance ticket for or from the Albertina includes the special exhibitions within.
The timing of the exhibition coincides with that annual period when Vienna’s art museums open the special bottles of art they’ve been saving for Christmas.
The Albertina, for example, also has a Chagall exhibition from late September. From early October, the Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien hosts a major Gauguin retrospective, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum turns its attention to Rembrandt.
How to get to the Longo exhibition
Just follow the tips at the end of the main Albertina museum article. Once through ticket control, go left and down to level -1 to see the charcoal wonders.
Address: Albertinaplatz 1, 1010 Vienna