Untitled (Men in Cities), 1984. charcoal, graphite and ink on paper 49 1/2 x 37 3/4 in. (125.7 x 95.9 cm) Signed and dated "Robert Longo 84" lower right.

PROVENANCE Metro Pictures, New York Charles Foley Gallery, Columbus, Ohio
EXHIBITED The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Robert Longo Restrospective 1976-1989; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, 1989.Another example was exhibited at LACMA, Robert Longo Retrospective 1976-1989; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, 1989, and another example was illustrated on the cover of Art News, "The 80s Stop Making Sense", October 1989
Isolated in the white blankness of their uniform background, Longo's drawings of urban men display a formal beauty that disguises their unsettling content. The descriptions of men and women are ambiguous—we will never learn whether it a dance of joy or the gestures of infantile grief; whether it is the spinning fall of the victim or of the assassin, which Longo has singled out to be locked into visual performance...In his earlier work, Longo used to derive his images from movie stills, but at present, he creates his own sources. He photographs his friends in countless poses, carefully screens the images for their dynamic content, and then enlarges those he selects into drawings, Clad in the black armor of formal business suits, Longo's figures become anonymous as people. They become personifications of universal feelings and anxieties, pathetic in their dehumanization, objects in the hands of their creator. (C. Kotik, Figures, Forms and Expressions, Albright/CEPA, 1981)