Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Allan D’Arcangelo
American; 20th-century
Omaha, NE: Joslyn Art Museum
65%
A-3. 1967. Acrylic on canvas
Anyone who has driven through eastern Colorado or southern Wyoming knows this scene well: the endless road, the endless sky, the blazing sun, and the occasional road sign providing relief from the monotony and therefore dominating the consciousness. D’Arcangelo’s flat, cartoonish treatment of his motifs turns them (perhaps too obviously?) into archetypes of the lonely artifacts of the road. But his handling of the surface — there are ridges and lines where his thickly-applied paint abutted the masking tape he used to delineate his shapes — causes this painting to enter some sort of realm of self-conscious metanarrative. It isn’t a painting about the road, or even a painting about paintings about the road; it waves its arms around and shouts “Look at me! I’m a painting about the road!” I’m reminded of the painting of the sailboat in The Simpsons (a copy of which a friend of mine has hanging in his living room) or the caricature of Look Mickey in Roy Lichtenstein’s Artist’s Studio—Look Mickey. (WC, 2025)