1980s Robert Longo "Solid Vision"

Details

Description

Robert Longo's Solid Vision is a large, late-1980s print that combines multiple printmaking techniques to create a dramatic, architectonic image … Read more Robert Longo's Solid Vision is a large, late-1980s print that combines multiple printmaking techniques to create a dramatic, architectonic image characteristic of his work from that period. It is generally regarded as one of his more ambitious and monumental prints, both for its size and for the way it pushes a flat surface toward sculptural presence.

• Date: Executed in 1989, during Longo's late-1980s printmaking phase.
• Medium: A composite print, lithograph and woodcut in colors
• Dimensions: 52 1/2 × 38 in | 133.4 × 96.5 cm

• Color and ink: blue and black ink giving a limited but high-contrast palette. The piece is signed and dated at time of printing, and has never been framed

Technique and process
• Combination of methods: Longo merges lithography (planographic printing) with relief-based elements like woodcut or silkscreen collage to build layered surfaces. This mixture aligns with descriptions of his late-1980s prints as technically ambitious, using collage-like assembly of printed components.
Sculptural sensibility: Critical writing on Longo emphasizes that his drawings and prints often function like sculptures in two dimensions, using light, shadow, and scale to create volume and
"weight." Solid Vision fits into this tendency by treating the paper as a space with depth rather than a flat plane.

Context in Longo's work
Period style: The work emerges from the era after Men in the Cities, when Longo was increasingly exploring monumental, architectonic, and conceptually charged imagery through printmaking as well as drawing. Late-1980s prints are noted for their ambitious scale and technical complexity, and Solid Vision is repeatedly described as "monumental" within that group.
Drawing as sculpture: Longo's broader practice is often framed as "drawing as a sculptural process," where he models forms as if carving or constructing them in space. Solid Vision extends that approach into print, using layered print processes to give the image a constructed, almost object-like presence.

• Collectability: Listings on commercial art platforms highlight it as a significant, large-scale print, sometimes noting inclusion of a certificate and positioning it among important late-1980s works by Longo. See less