Comparing the works of

Ana Mendieta

&Robert Longoby Fiona Luo

Ana MendietaNationality Cuban American

Lived 1948 - 1985

Sex Female

Ana Mendieta was an artist who’s work was extremely personal. Her art showed her personal struggles as an individual who was ripped from her cultural and national backgrounds from a young age, yet felt a lifelong belonging to it nonetheless. Mendieta’s work also illustrated a very real and raw female identity that was portrayed in her honest and raw portrayal of herself. Her work fell into the category of performance art, but also photography and video art, because of the ephemeral quality of performance. From this, her work is both dynamic, but also static, when given the circumstance and knowledge that the work was filled with motion, and that what can be viewed now is solely a documentation of temporary occurrence. However, these documentations grew also to become artworks themselves, curating qualities that differ from their active creation. This is something that is essential to keep in mind when viewing Mendieta’s work. Siluetas, a very famous series of work by Mendieta, and the one that will be discussed in this study, was executed fully in Cuba, reflecting the artist’s cultural connection to the country, and focuses on the natural offerings of the Cuban landscapes, which was significant to Mendieta’s personal links to the Country. In an artist statement for Siluetas, Mendieta states; “I had been carrying out a dialogue between the landscape and the female body (based on my own silhouette). I believe this has been a direct result of my having been torn from my homeland during my adolescence. I am overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast from the womb.”

Robert LongoNationality American

Lived 1953 - Now

Sex Male

Robert Longo’s art was made for mass culture. It was about mass culture, made within mass culture, and for mass culture. This is exceptionally true about his Men in the Cities series, which documented sharply dressed yet anonymous individuals in acute, contorted positions. The reason for their actions are left ambiguous in the artwork, sketched all in black graphite clay. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Long Island, Longo dreamed of the mass, commercial landscapes of the city so near his home, and it was only natural that his artwork was also based upon the analyzation of these individuals, trapped willingly in the business of the city. Longo moved to NYC after finishing his studies in art, and joined the underground art scene, where he met many local artists and finally become part of the insanity that was the city. To produce the 60 works titled Men in the Cities, Longo had his friends flip and lurch in all directions, while he photographed them in these aggressive poses. He then took these photographs and blew them up to 3 times the size, where he drew them with graphite clay, and edited them to exaggerate their poses to amplify their violent quality and change their clothing to formal attire. He produced these drawings from 1979 through 1982, and this series made him one of the most collected artists of the 80’s. Men in the Cities was a series of artwork that commented on widespread urban culture that donned him success in that exact society.

“Untitled” (from the Silueta series),

1973–77Mendieta’s Siluetas series were made from performances that she executed very precisely and intimately during her trips to Cuba. In all the pieces that were titled Siluetas, Ana’s physical body is rarely shown, but only suggested and hinted at from the silhouette that was printed onto a miscellaneous surface. These performances were documented by the plethora of photos she took of her performances, which are the only remnants of this series of artwork. Because the Siluetas pieces were all performed in nature and on surfaces that were subject to change, growth, and decay at all times, these artworks left us only as fast as they were born, through the careful and methodical planning of Mendieta. These pieces, although did not require a immensely high level of artistic technique, thematically encompassed so many, if all of Mendieta’s artistic intents. The setting of the artwork, which is an ancient, maybe religious abandoned building (perhaps making a indigenous allusion), becomes the cultural base that Mendieta wishes to reconnect with, and by literally imprinting her silhouette within this setting, she reestablishes that connection. However, the ephemeral nature of the artwork could perhaps suggest a saddening hindered success of doing so even as she attempts again and again. Her female silhouette brings in a more sensual and emotive link of her body to nature, and poses a portrayal of women that Mendieta believes to be most truthful. This particular artwork, which features Mendieta’s silhouette printed in a red color, could also allude to her infatuation of life, death, and decay, as the use of blood or materials of similar effect is apparent in many of her works with those concerns.

Series were documented hastily with Kodak camera

red paint/ liquid used to impose Mendieta’s body on the ancient building

Figure “stands” within the window in an almost religious fashion

Mendieta’s body is the primary subject

Natural decay in setting of piece

“Untitled” (from the Silueta

series), 1973–77

In this series of two photographs documenting another creation by Mendieta from the same series, the ephemeral nature and the importance of the material of the artwork can be perceived. It is essential to remember that the photos of the Siluetas series are only documentations of the actual performance art, and that what we see now that has been captured shows only certain instances of the performance. In the photo on the left, we see the freshly completed artwork, which his Mendieta’s silhouette pressed into the sand of a grey beach. On the right, her established print on the earth of Cuba has been washed out, baring the original flatness of the beach. Mendieta believed that through the Siluetas series, she would prove that her body was simultaneously absent and present on the earth’s surface. By constructing her personal figure with natural materials that are prone to change and allowing them to change in the cycle of nature, her body is also dissolved into the earth. Her body is now no different to any other natural matter in the earth, moving through nature’s cycle. The documentations of this series were taken with Kodak film, and then printed onto slides or photo paper (C-print). The primitive and strictly simplistic method of exhibition perhaps was a way for Mendieta to take focus away from the “window” into the actual art, so that the overall effect would be as raw and intuitive as her performances were. This way, viewers do not see exhibition, mere photographs, as a piece of art in itself, but only as a means, an impression to imagine the real art. As Mendieta herself called them, “earth-body sculptures”.

Series was documented hastily with Kodak camera

Figure is washed away with ease, not barrier to preserve the sculpture

Figure is imprinted in sand gently

soft lines, natural shapes

“Untitled”, Men in the Cities, 1979

The Men in the Cities series was an illustration, a snapshot of the life of young men and women and the emotional lives that they lead. All the subjects of the artwork made as part of this series were young, attractive, slim, but completely without identity, sometimes with even their faces unseen. These figures are amidst a movement, but a movement out of an emotion that we are unaware of. Are they angry? Are they happy? Frustrated? In Pain? The uncertainty that is brought through these anonymous figures is doused with a negative mood by Longo’s use of color; the stark contrast of the black graphite against the white of the paper presents a direct confrontation to the audience. The sharpness of the lines and shading used to illustrate these figures register with the fact that these themes were also our reality. These young men and women, placed in the center of each drawing, were bursting with sentiment, but completely isolated. As mentioned already, Longo was obsessed with the mass media, with all things commercial and larger-than-life. He explores the product of this culture in this series, however not with praise. Longo comments on the ambiguity of the media, foretelling ideas of a glamorous death, which may be portrayed in the body language of the men and women in the drawings. He magnifies the importance of these ordinary members of the traditional audience with the scale of the artwork, reflecting the portrayal of individuals in the mass media. Longo also reinterprets that portrayal with an ambiguity of emotions and identities of his subjects, and highlights the complex emotional toll of society and urban culture on its citizens.

Very large size painting

Figure/subject is isolated, placed in the center.

Drawing is black and white, no other colors. Clean, sharp lines

Realistic details i shading, in the small nuances and wrinkles of the individual

“Untitled”, Men in the Cities,

1981

In this drawing, because of the natural lighter shade of the clothing worn by the subject matter, there seems to be more dimension than the first piece out of the Men in the Cities series, where the young man wears almost all black. Here, the emotions of the artwork are still heavy, understanding the thematic goals of Longo for Men in the Cities as well as taking into account the position of the woman, but less morbid. The lighter grey shade present in the majority of this piece effectively gives it more life. This, I believe also collectively highlights the intricacy of the internal struggles faced by the illustrated generation. While the subject matter of “Untitled”, 1979 seemed to have given up, falling in a backwards fashion, the subject matter of this piece is clutching her head, perhaps due to some sort of paining conflict, but her body language is tense, like she is preparing to fight back. These specific contorts of body movement would not have been able to be realized from simple imagination of the body. Longo’s exploration of these very raw, unrefined, and expressionist physical movements is what makes this series impactful, and visually stimulating upon multiple speculations. Longo was able to achieve this by taking photographs of people while making them dance, instructing them to fall backwards and forwards, and even throwing tennis balls at them to get the most natural and instinctive poses. Everything in this artwork is quite simple; the colors, the composition, the material, the drawing process - but the subject matter is not. It is only by capturing the strings in the muscle, the wrinkles of the skin, and the subtle, awkward angles of the arms and legs does Longo deliver something that is more than portraiture, more than just a drawing of young men and women.

Positioning of subject conveys pain, confusion, negative emotion.

Slightly softer lines, blended smoothly

stark contrast to skirt, which is completely black, very full color

The visual similarities between the works of Robert Longo and Ana Mendieta are very visible; the human form. In each series, the author placed them in the very center of the composition, forcing the audience to focus on it, to imagine the implications that they were making by choosing to portray the human form above all else. Yet, the impact of these human silhouettes are quite dissimilar. In Longo’s work, the harsh, sharp lines and the contrasting use of colors, or more so the abstinence from color produces a confrontation. A very serious, very in-your-face confrontation. The size of Longo’s work was also at a much greater scale of than Mendieta’s Siluetas series; his drawings for the Men in the Cities were often around 150cm wide and up to 2 meters long. These giant, black and white sketches allows the details in the illustrations of these young men and women to be analyzed, therefore it is apparent that Longo paid a lot of attention to making everything immaculate, from the hyperrealistic folds in both the woman and man’s shirt to the shading on the bone structure and muscles on his subjects. This may also be because, considering the formation aspects of each series by the two artists, Men in the Cities is much more one dimensional than Siluetas. Men in the Cities is simply drawings of photographs, and the drawings are the only end product of the series, the only product that was meant to be exhibited, to be the artwork. Siluetas is a much more complex work, because it is both a performance art piece and a photography series. Simply regarding the fact that there two types of art making processes involved, the stylistic concerns becomes already twofold. In Siluetas as a performance art piece, Mendieta was simply transposing herself into the earth, literally lying in the material and making a connection between the two barriers. When Siluetas becomes a photography series, it is not her, but the visual look of the bodily silhouette in nature that becomes the concern, and the audience then thinks about the asymmetry of the silhouette as it is disintegrated by natural cycles, and the missing details in her silhouette, such as between the torso and her arm in the red imprint. These small details is what makes Mendieta’s work much more unconstrained than Longos, reflecting the softer lines and focus placed on the center subject. St

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Thematic Concerns

While Robert Longo and Ana Mendieta made art based off of very different aspirations and thirst for exploration, they had one very affection with the human body. It is apparent that the main focus and subject of both works from Men in the Cities and Siluetas were people, portrayed in varying levels of clarity, but nevertheless human beings. One thing was clear, that they were using the human body as a means to explore an individual and their relation with their surroundings. Mendieta used the body more symbolically, as a signifier of her return to where she believed she belonged. She used these imprints to return a small fragment of her identity to the world, and then let the natural occurrences pull and spread that fragment into the essential makeup of the earth. In doing so, she allowed herself to be one continuous being with the earth, and she became not bounded to her physical being but consistently networked into the world. Longo’s use of the body is almost in reversal to the process of Mendieta, where he was not attempting to connect his subjects further into their environment, but actually to isolate them from it. By removing these city-infused individuals from city, he was able to reveal how they were truly being thrown about and hit by the distractions of an urban lifestyle. While Mendieta’s work was an illustration of the process to connect human to earth (earth-body sculptures), Longo’s was the product of a connection made between man and earth.

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The message that each artist wished to bring through their work was quite heavily based off of their upbringing. As mentioned before, Longo’s work was born from his awareness of the mass media, and through that mass media perspective he made art that was for a very large audience base. His art was not for himself or about himself, but about a greater collective group of people that were similar to him and their struggles as a whole. As an all American male artist at the time of the Men in the Cities’ creation, I believe that he was able to be more ambitious, to reach to express a greater message to a widespread audience. His art was more conventional in a sense, as event though it did express a very real problem of young people in the city, it was not one that would have outraged people in its discussion. As the artist that he was also, these were the sole problems that he would have faced institutionally, which is what became the themes of his artwork. Longo was straightforwardly addressing the way in which the city could batter, tear apart, and wear down these isolated individuals. He showed the pain that they were experiencing, but his work did not capture one person’s personal struggle. Mendieta’s work was a personal narrative. It was the story of her, as a female estranged from her homeland, using art as a way to return her body to that place. Siluetas was made from her belief that she would be able to embed her identity into the earth through her process of artmaking. In comparison to Longo’s work, Mendietas art is much less appealing to a wider audience, simply because of its sometimes gruesome or disturbing subject matter, and more subtle approach to her expression in art. Her themes of womanhood and body were much more risqué, in terms of the time that the art was made, which made her work less acceptable to the public eye. It takes more time and energy to decode the implications of Mendieta’s work, especially in the case of Siluetas, where she has a lighter hand in graphic qualities of the artwork. Longo’s messages, on the other hand, can be perceived instantly and easily. The artists were trying to explain a certain effect of the world on its citizens, but on very different scales, which could have been caused by their places in society, which made one artist’s work more of a spectacle than the other’s a revelation.

Connection To My Work

As my work is a self portrait, it poses the most similarities visually to the work of Ana Mendieta. However to compare my work to those of Robert Longo and Ana Mendieta, I would say that my work simply thematically has more in common with Longo’s work for Men in the Cities, but I believe that I expressed those thematic goals with an approach more similar to Mendieta’s. Growing up, I think that I have a more similar upbringing to that of Longo’s, with a heavy awareness of popular and mass media, with an aspiration for a modern lifestyle. Comparatively, I was also trying to combat that modern lifestyle through the very simplistic and primitive technique. Yet I would also say that that exact technique is very much influenced by that of Mendieta’s. These paintings were painted on an inexpensive, unbleached brown paper without much prior planning on the specific compositions of the faces, therefore my work was not restrictive, and came about very organically, much like the Siluetas series. In this painting, I am also exploring myself in relation to the modern world, and that intimacy of the exploration, as it is only of myself, is more similar to the visions of Mendieta’s work.

Technical Influences

I believe that the Ana Mendieta’s artistic process is something that has inspired me quite a lot in my own art making. She balances quite perfectly the line between prior planning and letting her art develop organically in its execution. Her Siluetas series was meticulously planned in terms of location, angles, and the materials present at the site. She also planned the implications that she wanted to make through the piece that was about to performed. In a similar way, I do plan the skeleton or the loose structures of the content of my artwork and how I wish for it to look and feel, but I also understand that at a certain extent the creation must be spontaneous and develop in a way that make sense to what is already there. In this piece, i knew the materials that I wanted to use, the look I was going for, and also that I wanted a repetition of self portraits, but once I started painting the different faces, I allowed my intuition to take over, and tell me how I should paint each line and stroke. I also chose to paint in a very primitive style because I have always been obsessed with modernity and extremely crisp, polished art pieces. Here, I am trying to create something that is the complete opposite, to embrace that organic, natural look, and allow the natural wear and tear as well as wrinkling become part of the art. I let more variables out of the grasp of my control, which allowed for the variety of structures of my face in each repetition of self portraiture.

ThematicConnectionsMy initial goal in this painting was to paint myself quite realistically, with a variety of strange facial expressions in action, similar to the movement in Robert Longo’s Men in the Cities however just in my face. As I was experimenting and exploring, I started to find this style of painting myself, and i felt that it was a portrayal that was very abstract, comical even, but that captured me quite well. I felt that this comical style of drawing myself was funny, but eerie, and interesting to look at because it was so utterly expressionless. I thought that this style went very well with the simplistic brown paper that I was working with. I think that this primitive style painting combat against the modern lifestyle that I and the people around me lead. I wanted to create a contrast from the very modern and clean, minimalistic art that I was making, and see if I could create something that was nostalgic and radical at the same time. The variety in the way that I looked in each portrayal of my portrait may symbolize the ease of change and ease of manipulation, ever so slightly, of our faces and who we are. I know that I change all the time, and most of that change is probably because of the plethora of media that I am exposed to. I enjoy the irony of the primitive, unaware painting style in expressing a theme that takes very much awareness to discuss, which I believe that Mendieta’s work, and Siluetas has been able to convey that same effect. The simple silhouettes taken on grainy photography does not seem like too much at first glance, although very mesmerizing, but it takes a knowledge of the context and a deeper understanding to figure out the real goal behind the art.

ConclusionHuman beings are complex creatures, as well as very diverse creatures. It is a fact that they have been the topic of discussion for thousands of artists, but many of the artists take too obvious of a concept to discuss in relation to the human body or the human experience on earth. But there are some artists who don’t take that shortcut when exploring either themselves or other people in their society, like Robert Longo or Ana Mendieta. They were able to refine their views to see humans in a way that other’s hadn’t before. Longo illustrated a struggle that everyone knew to be true, but weren’t able to formulate into a cohesive statement through his drawings of the battered youth, and Mendieta created an entire theory in which she was able to find security and connection with something that would've otherwise been only her past. Mendieta connected herself, a living human being, with the earth unlike any other artist ever had, fully submerging herself into the cycle of the world, omnipresent in every leaf and droplet of water. This is the type of view that I would like to develop for the human race, as being a living individual myself, I am and will always be fascinated by our kind, and especially how we are affected by a world that we have created ourselves.

Works CitedLongo, Robert. Digital image. Socks. Socks Studios, n.d. Web. 3 Oct. 2015.

Longo, Robert. Men in the Cities. Digital image. Robert Longo. Robert Longo, n.d. Web. 3 Oct. 2015.

Longo, Robert. Men in the Cities. Digital image. Sheldon Art Museum. Sheldon Art Museum, n.d. Web. 3 Oct. 2015.

Lucarelli, Fosco. "Men in the Cities, by Robert Longo (1979)." Socks. MICROCITIES, Architecture Cityscape, Landscape., 4 Dec. 2013. Web. 3 Oct. 2015.

Mendieta, Ana. Digital image. Reconstruction. Reconstruction, 2 July 2007. Web. 3 Oct. 2015.

Mendieta, Ana. Untitled. Digital image. Care Arts. Care Arts, 19 July 2002. Web. 3 Oct. 2015.

Muchnic, Suzanne. "Art Review : Constant Lure Of Longo's 'Men'" Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 31 Mar. 1986. Web. 3 Oct. 2015.

Reconstruction. "Reconstruction 7.2 (2007)." Reconstruction 7.2 (2007). Reconstruction, 2 July 2007. Web. 03 Oct. 2015.

Warchol, Julie. "Performed Invisibility: Ana Mendieta’s 'Siluetas'" Smith College Museum of Art. Smith College, 10 Jan. 2013. Web. 3 Oct. 2015.