Why a charcoal of police in Ferguson is the most important artwork of 2014

Robert Longo’s powerful drawing of police holding back protesters in Ferguson is a vital record of the resurgence of racism and a history painting for our time

2014 has produced horrific politics. Racism has returned, that hydra-headed idiot, everywhere from Missouri to Rochester, where a Ukip candidate won a byelection after openly speculating about repatriating Europeans. It is not much by way of compensation to say the year also produced a mighty piece of political art. But it did.

Robert Longo’s Untitled (Ferguson Police August 13, 2014) is a 10-ft wide charcoal drawing of a line of faceless cops, clad and helmeted in black, silhouetted against searchlights in a swirl of illuminated smoke. This is a brilliantly powerful drawing, based on photographs taken on the angry streets of Ferguson, Missouri, after 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot dead by a police officer there on 9 August. Since the first protests and police reaction that Longo set out to draw, this has become an ever more significant moment in the old and unending story of racial injustice in America. Longo’s picture looks prophetic and monumental. It should be purchased by the Museum of Modern Art or the National Gallery of Art. This is a true history painting for our time, done from photographs in desolate charcoal.

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