Robert Longo for Bottega Veneta

The love story between fashion and advertising art photography goes on, the two creative souls achieving mutual inspiration and vigour from each other. The new chapter of the romance is signed this time by the renowned artist Robert Longo, the occasion being Bottega Veneta Fall-Winter 2010/2011 advertising campaign, produced in New York this past March, celebrating also the first time that the brand men’s collection receives its own advertising.

Robert Longo, familiar to a wide range of media including sculpture, painting, photography, and film, has always had a virtuos talent for evoking complex themes with simple, powerful imagery; his series “Men in the Cities,” depicting men and women in business attire contorted in extreme positions, has influenced photographers for decades. This is exactly what Bottega Veneta Creative Director Tomas Maier had in mind: “I have always admired the strength and individuality of Robert Longo’s ‘Men in the Cities’ images,” Maier says , “This collection, with its dark palette and emphasis on line and movement, seemed well-suited to his graphic approach. Also, this is the first time we are focusing on both the men’s and women’s collections and I thought Robert would be the ideal artist to bring the two sides of the brand together.”

There is all of Longo graphic style and ability to distill images to a minimum of elements, in the extraordinary pictures of this new campaign, featuring man and women in the balance, in an elegant and mysterious tension, yet with all the passion and distress of a missed embrace, or a desperately wanted approach. The perfect scenario for Bottega Veneta Fall Winter collection, incentered on the silhouette and characterized by contrasts of structure and fluidity, stillness and movement, masculine and feminine; the palette is dark and rich, illuminated by flashes of moody iridescence.

Both the men’s and women’s collections touch on questions of strength and power, exploring ways of dressing that express a multifaceted individuality. Ads will run globally in select titles including GQ, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Vogue Hommes and Engine in Japan. Robert Longo adds an extraordinary chapter to the story of Bottega Veneta unusual advertising, following previous collaborations with artists like Nan Goldin (Spring 2010), Steven Meisel (Fall 2009) and Annie Leibovitz (Fall 2007).