Forrest was a cotton plantation owner and slave trader, an important Confederate army general who, after the war, became first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. To me, through Longo's charcoal, he seems to be on a ghostly march through the mists of history. This one, of Nathan Bedford Forrest and his horse, was removed from a public park in Memphis, Tenn. The artist found a subject for his powerful technique when newspapers and TV screens filled with images of Confederate generals being dethroned. Robert Longo/Metro Pictures, New York Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles and Pace Gallery Robert Longo, Untitled (Nathan Bedford Forrest Statue Removal Memphis, 2017), 2018. 'They were thinking about what's in the media.' At the same time, they were feeling enraged about what was happening in their world, their country, democracy. 'They didn't make paintings of what they saw out the window,' Steiner says. He and his artist friends ( Cindy Sherman among them) felt that changed how they looked at the world. 'We're constantly bombarded by them,' Longo says. The curator explains that when Longo and his generation of artists (he was born in 1953) started working in the 1970s, 'they were really thinking about images, and then began making images out of images.' Images from TV, movies, newspapers, magazines, advertisements, all vying for our attention. The work is political, but it's about more than politics. 'We're used to seeing in technicolor.' Charcoal, on Longo's immense paper, 'changes the way you pay attention.' Which is Longo's intention. 'Charcoal turns everything into grays,' Steiner says. laboriously applied, small stroke after small stroke. 'Once I began making art, I discovered self-love. 'Period.' He speaks quite thoughtfully, and very personally. 'I think making any art is a political gesture,' he declares. He arranges parts of various photos into a single image, projects it onto huge paper panels and traces the outlines. He harvests photo after photo of the place where the event is playing out - often it's an institution we all know. They begin with his reaction to something that's happening in the world - an event that prompts his anger or pain. Photos are part of his process, but his huge pieces ( The Supreme Court is 10 feet tall by 12 feet wide) are all handmade and take much longer to produce than the snap of a camera. There are some reasons to hope.' Here's how Longo makes his drawings that look like photos. So when we spoke recently, he had 'hope for better days. It's not precisely a political statement, it's a 4-inch glimpse of the wall behind the ends of the two massive paper panels. Hope? With that merciless glowering sky, and the split down the middle. Robert Longo/Metro Pictures, New York Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles Robert Longo, Untitled (The Supreme Court of the United States (Split)), 2018.

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