Robert Longo

Robert Longo drops the curtain on the American dream. 

The stars and stripes of the American flag have appeared in Robert’s work throughout his career, taking on different meanings with each iteration. This new edition is taken from his recent exploration of democracy and power. For Robert, Untitled (Falling Flag) is about “revealing a void – it’s a curtain falling, and nothing exists beyond.”

The flag itself takes up less than half of the image. The rest of the print is an intense black that represents the imposing “void”. To achieve this solid colour in his original drawing, Robert built up layer upon layer of charcoal on white paper. This process is mirrored in the silkscreen process, which included grayscale separation across 9 colours. This allows the complexity of the dark charcoal in Robert’s original to come to life with a hyper-realistic grain texture.