“What Art Books Don’t Tell You,” The Times-Picayune Lagniappe
By the time Robert Gordy died in 1986 at age 52, he had already created two of the most original and influential styles ever to emerge from New Orleans. During his later, briefer (five year) stylistic period, he produced a long series of psychologically intense, Expressionistic portraits that represented the AIDS epidemic. He created those riveting, distorted faces of men with a then-unusual printing technique known as monotype. Monotypes are one-of-a-kind renderings produced by swiftly painting designs directly onto a Formica printing plate, then placing paper over the plate and rolling it through a printing press as if it were an etching. Gordy pioneered the now-popular method locally.