Born in New York, 1953. Lives and works in New York
Untitled (Shark 10), 2008, charcoal on mounted paper
Untitled (Damien), 2007, charcoal on paper

In recent years, the artist Robert Longo has countered the American fantasy of a perfect dream world with several cycles of charcoal drawings depicting nightmarish scenarios including tsunami ocean waves, atomic bombs blasts, ammunition, and sharp-toothed sharks in the series Perfect Gods.
Longo’s series of charcoal drawings Beginning of the World captures closeup images of children’s heads. Seemingly asleep, their faces convey peaceful contentment, while their stillness endows the images with a mystical quality. Longo gave the real children he studied new names and radically altered their appearance, in some cases even changing their sex. The sleeping children, which follow directly upon Longo’s ominous yet beautiful planet series, call to mind a cosmic system floating in space. These new works are quiet yet haunting symbols of the sleep of reason, hinting either at a new beginning for humankind or at its impending demise.