Mark Lombardi
Mark Lombardi | |
---|---|
Born | New York, New York | March 23, 1951
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Syracuse University |
Occupation | Artist |
Mark Lombardi (March 23, 1951 – March 22, 2000) was an American neo-conceptual artist who specialized in drawings that document alleged financial and political frauds by power brokers, and in general "the uses and abuses of power".[1][2][3]
Education and early career
Lombardi was born in the town of
Late career
Six years before his death, Lombardi switched to
Initially, as the subject of one of his manuscripts, the primary focus was on the
Lombardi divorced in October 1996, and moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn at the urging of his friend Fred Tomaselli. There, he participated in a group show at the Drawing Center, called Selections: Winter 1997, followed by two solo art shows: Silent Partners, shown in November 1998 at Pierogi 2000 in Brooklyn,[5] and Vicious Circles, a work drawing upon Jonathan Kwitny's book of the same name dealing with Mafia involvement in the legitimate commercial markets, shown in 1999 at the Devon Golden Gallery in Chelsea.[2][3] Mark was included in Versus IV - a Willoughby Sharp curated group effort juxtaposing five American artists (including John Drury, Neil Frankl, Alan Skarritt and Duff Schweninger in addition to Lombardi) with eight Europeans in Torino, Italy - also in 1998, where two of his drawings including "Neil Bush and Silverado #2" (1996) were printed in the accompanying catalogue. He also participated in another group show, Greater New York: New Art in New York Now in February 2000 at the P.S. 1 art gallery.[3]
In March 2000, on the day before his death, Lombardi moved all his work to Pierogi 2000. He then bolted his apartment from the inside and hanged himself, on the day before his birthday and three years after he had moved to Williamsburg.[2]
Works
Lombardi called his diagrams Narrative Structures.[4] They are structurally similar to sociograms – a type of graph drawing used in the field of social network analysis, and to a lesser degree by earlier artists like Hans Haacke. Other important influences on Lombardi were philosopher Herbert Marcuse,[2] and visualization expert Edward Tufte.[6]
"On October 17, 2001, five weeks after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center...an FBI agent contacted the Whitney Museum of American Art....to obtain a reproduction of Mark Lombardi's large drawing BCCI-ICIC & FAB, 1972-1991 (4th Version) or, if that were not possible, to see the actual work at the museum. At about the same time, Lombardi's gallery, Pierogi, also received a telephone inquiry from a 'lead investigator into the September 11th attacks.' Federal investigators wanted to obtain information pertaining to wealthy Saudi Arabian terrorist Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network by tracing his many financial connections...[to] BCCI," Robert Hobbs writes in his introduction to Global Networks.[4][7] Hobbes continues: "If government investigators had merely decided to include select members of the art world in their investigation in the 9/11 attacks, that fact alone would have been newsworthy. But when an F.B.I. agent consulted a work of art for clues pertaining to terrorist financing, she unwittingly made history."[4]
In Lombardi's historical diagrams, each node or connection was drawn from news stories from reputable media organizations, and his drawings document the purported financial and political frauds by
According to Hobbs, who faced the overwhelming task of fact-checking Lombardi:
"Certain things that are listed in the drawing are in red. These represent court judgments, actual dollar amounts. That is verifiable information. And I think that Lombardi himself realized that not everything could be verified. So I think what you have instead is names. We know about connections of names. Exactly what is that connection is hard to characterize. So that is a line with an arrow in one direction, or an arrow in two directions. So it's really the abstract component of the work of art. It's what can be represented, and – really – what cannot be represented."[7]
For instance, his 1999 drawing "George W. Bush, Harken Energy, and Jackson Stephens, ca 1979–90" shows alleged connections between
Other subjects that interested Lombardi and were covered in his works include:
- Chicago Outfit
- Meyer Lansky
- The P2 conspiracy, Michele Sindona, Roberto Calvi
- World Finance Corporation
- Nugan Hand Ltd.[10]
- Gerald Bull, Project Babylon, Space Research Corporation
- Iran–Contra, Lake Resources of Panama and Oliver North
- Global International Airways and the Indian Springs State Bank
- The Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and the arming of Saddam Hussein
- Charles Keating, Lincoln Savings (a subsidiary of American Continental Corporation)
- BCCI and ICIC
- Hans Kopp, Shakarchi Trading AG
- United Press International, and its attempted takeover by Pat Robertson with the aid of Beurt SerVaas.
- Jackson T. Stephens, the Lippo Group, and Bill Clinton; also, Clinton, the Lippo Group, and China Ocean Shipping Co.
Posthumous exhibits
A major exhibit of Lombardi's art, "Mark Lombardi: Global Networks," was organized by
Several of Lombardi's works were included in a 2010 show, NineteenEightyFour, hosted by the Austrian Cultural Forum New York.[1] A re-exhibition of his work was held at the Pierogi Gallery in 2011 which, in addition to his drawings, included his bookshelf and a vitrine displaying some of his reference materials, as well as a 1996 video of Lombardi interviewed by Andy Mann.[14][15][16]
20 of Lombardi's drawings are in the permanent collection of
In 2012, German director Mareike Wegener released a documentary on Lombardi, entitled Mark Lombardi: Death-Defying Acts Of Art And Conspiracy. The movie premiered in May 2012 in Germany and the
References
- ^ a b Rosenberg, Karen (August 20, 2010), "The Lights of Big Brother's Eyes, Blinking in the City", The New York Times.
- ^ Dannatt, Adrian (May 16, 2000), "Obituary: Mark Lombardi", The Independent, archived from the originalon May 17, 2013.
- ^ New York Times.
- ^ ISBN 0-916365-67-0.
- New York Times, December 25, 1998.
- ^ Hobbs, Robert (2003). Excerpt from Global Networks catalog discussing the influence of Edward Tufte on Lombardi posted at Tufte's website.
- ^ a b "The 'Conspiracy' Art of Mark Lombardi: Late Artist's Swirling Diagrams Chart Scandalous Relationships". NPR. November 1, 2003. Retrieved 6 November 2013. You talked about the FBI agent who came to look at Lombardi's work after 9/11, yesterday [before the opening of posthumous Lombardi show "Global Networks"], Yesterday members of homeland security asked to come and see the exhibition before it opened. Having a work of art that a government agency is looking at to verify certain facts is incredibly fascinating. They were intrigued by how Lombardi was presenting and dealing with the information.
- ^ Boston Globe. Review of "Global Networks" at the Drawing Center, New York, 2003.
- S2CID 233595956.
- ^ "Mark Lombardi - Nugan Hand Ltd. Sydney, Australia c. 1972-80 (6th version)". www.museoreinasofia.es.
- New York Times, archived from the original(PDF) on October 22, 2013, retrieved October 22, 2013. Review of "Global Networks" at the Drawing Center, New York, 2003.
- ^ Bigge, Ryan (Fall 2005), "Making the Invisible Visible: The Neo-Conceptual Tentacles of Mark Lombardi", Left History, 10 (2): 127–134. Review of "Global Networks" at Art Gallery of Ontario, 2004.
- ^ Parcelli, Carlo (Spring 2007), "Mark Lombardi: Global Networks (book review)", Flashpoint.
- ^ Neyenesch, Cassandra (April 2011). "Mark Lombardi: Index". The Brooklyn Rail.
- ^ Baker, R. C. (March 2, 2011). "Mark Lombardi's World Conspiracy, Corruption, and Vatican Hit Men: Pierogi hosts an overview of the artist's career". The Village Voice..
- ^ Chayka, Kyle (March 9, 2011). "Mark Lombardi's Information Art". Hypoallergenic..
- MOMA, retrieved 2012-04-14.
- Whitney Museum of American Art, retrieved 2012-04-14.
- National Public Radio.
- ^ Sutton, Benjamin (May 15, 2012), "New Doc Examines the Life and Death of Artist Mark Lombardi, Drawer of Sinister Infographics", ArtInfo, archived from the original on March 14, 2013, retrieved May 20, 2012.
- ^ Huffington Post.
- ^ Henely, Kalvin (September 12, 2012), "Mark Lombardi: Death-Defying Acts of Art and Conspiracy", Slant Magazine.
- New York Times.
Further reading
- Friedman, Alon (2012), "Mark Lombardi's visualisation discovery", in Hohl, Michael (ed.), Making visible the invisible: art, design and science in data visualisation (PDF), Huddersfield, England: University of Huddersfield, pp. 12–16, ISBN 978-1-86218-103-8.
- Law, Jessica M. (2012), Mark Lombardi's "Narrative Structures": The Visibility of the Network and the New Global Order, Master's thesis, College of Fine Arts of Ohio University.
- Casemajor Loustau, Nathalie (2013), "Les topographies du pouvoir de Mark Lombardi : l'œuvre dans la carte" [Mark Lombardi’s Topographies of Power: The Work in the Map], Espace Sculpture (in French), 103–104: 12–16.
- Zdebik, Jakub (2011), "Networks of Corruption: The Aesthetics of Mark Lombardi's Relational Diagrams", RACAR: Revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review, 36 (2): 66–77, .
- "Initial report on digitally researching the network drawings of Mark Lombardi", Tolksdorf 2013
External links
- Richard, Frances (2002). "Obsessive – Generous: Toward a Diagram of Mark Lombardi", Wburg.com, Vol. 2, #2, Winter 2001–2002 issue. Reduced version of article included in the Global Networks catalog.
- Mark Lombardi Artist Page at Pierogi Gallery
- "Learning from Lombardi" – Benjamin Fry
- "Lombardi Networks: Towards the complete Mark Lombardi digital"