Alan D'Arcangelo
Encyclopedia
Allan D'Arcangelo was an American
Artist
and Printmaker, best known known for his paintings of highways and road signs. His reputation as a Pop artist was established in 1963 with his series of paintings of American highways and signs, an example of which includes US Highway 1, Number 5.
at Cornell University
, Brooklyn College
, and the School of Visual Arts
during the 1960s and he also taught painting in several other institutions throughout his career.
During the early 1960s, Allan D’Arcangelo was linked with Pop Art
. “Marilyn” (1962) depicts an illustrative head and shoulders on which the facial features are marked by lettered slits to be “fitted” with the eyebrows, eyes, nose and mouth which appear off to the right in the composition. In “Madonna and Child,” (1963) the featureless faces of Jackie Kennedy and Caroline are ringed with haloes, enough to make their status as contemporary icons perfectly clear.
But D’Arcangelo is better known for his pictures of highways and roadblocks, which pictured deep perspectival vistas in a simplified, flat plane, the view as seen from the driver’s seat as one zooms along the seemingly never-ending American highway in most any state. Next came a series “Barriers,” in which cropped, abstracted imagery of road barriers were superimposed over the one-point perspectival highway vistas. These were a move further towards concern with abstract, two-dimensionality without negating the element culled from seen aspects of the American landscape. The series called “Constellations” (there are 120 in all) further abstracted the view of road barriers into perspectival, jutting patterns thrusting across the canvas against a white ground. The element of the seen is never obliterated and always primary in D’Arcangelo’s dialectic, as amply evidenced in his return to highway imagery in the 1970s.
For several years during that decade, D’Arcangelo slowed down his formerly prolific output. In the Spring of 1982, he had his first one-man exhibition in New York
in five years. The new pictures were rather scenic landscape vistas, simplified and showing his ongoing concern with jutting perspectival space, now inhabited by flatly painted images of highway overpasses, a jet wing, grain field, electric lines. Indications of the American industrial scene seem more related to the hand-painted, pristine look of Charles Sheeler
than to the pop of, say, Roy Lichtenstein
In form, there is also a reminiscence of field paintings in the simplicity and emblematic quality of these works. Now, as before, the main element in D’Arcangelo’s pictures is the post-abstraction search for, as he put it, “icons that matter,” monumental archetypes of the contemporary American expansive landscape highway.
His paintings are in the permanent collections of the Tate Gallery
in London
, the Whitney Museum of American Art
in New York
, the Denver Art Museum
in Colorado
, the Walker Art Center
in Minneapolis, the Butler Institute of American Art
in Youngstown, Ohio
, and many other public and private collections worldwide.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
and Printmaker, best known known for his paintings of highways and road signs. His reputation as a Pop artist was established in 1963 with his series of paintings of American highways and signs, an example of which includes US Highway 1, Number 5.
Career
A veteran of dozens of solo exhibitions beginning in the late 1950s, D'Archangelo taught Fine artFine art
Fine art or the fine arts encompass art forms developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery"....
at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
, Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...
, and the School of Visual Arts
School of Visual Arts
The School of Visual Arts , is a proprietary art school located in Manhattan, New York City, and is widely considered to be one of the leading art schools in the United States. It was established in 1947 by co-founders Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and...
during the 1960s and he also taught painting in several other institutions throughout his career.
During the early 1960s, Allan D’Arcangelo was linked with Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
. “Marilyn” (1962) depicts an illustrative head and shoulders on which the facial features are marked by lettered slits to be “fitted” with the eyebrows, eyes, nose and mouth which appear off to the right in the composition. In “Madonna and Child,” (1963) the featureless faces of Jackie Kennedy and Caroline are ringed with haloes, enough to make their status as contemporary icons perfectly clear.
But D’Arcangelo is better known for his pictures of highways and roadblocks, which pictured deep perspectival vistas in a simplified, flat plane, the view as seen from the driver’s seat as one zooms along the seemingly never-ending American highway in most any state. Next came a series “Barriers,” in which cropped, abstracted imagery of road barriers were superimposed over the one-point perspectival highway vistas. These were a move further towards concern with abstract, two-dimensionality without negating the element culled from seen aspects of the American landscape. The series called “Constellations” (there are 120 in all) further abstracted the view of road barriers into perspectival, jutting patterns thrusting across the canvas against a white ground. The element of the seen is never obliterated and always primary in D’Arcangelo’s dialectic, as amply evidenced in his return to highway imagery in the 1970s.
For several years during that decade, D’Arcangelo slowed down his formerly prolific output. In the Spring of 1982, he had his first one-man exhibition in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
in five years. The new pictures were rather scenic landscape vistas, simplified and showing his ongoing concern with jutting perspectival space, now inhabited by flatly painted images of highway overpasses, a jet wing, grain field, electric lines. Indications of the American industrial scene seem more related to the hand-painted, pristine look of Charles Sheeler
Charles Sheeler
Charles Rettew Sheeler, Jr. was an American artist. He is recognized as one of the founders of American modernism and one of the master photographers of the 20th century.-Early life and career:...
than to the pop of, say, Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...
In form, there is also a reminiscence of field paintings in the simplicity and emblematic quality of these works. Now, as before, the main element in D’Arcangelo’s pictures is the post-abstraction search for, as he put it, “icons that matter,” monumental archetypes of the contemporary American expansive landscape highway.
His paintings are in the permanent collections of the Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, the Denver Art Museum
Denver Art Museum
The Denver Art Museum is an art museum in Denver, Colorado located in Denver's Civic Center.It is known for its collection of American Indian art,and has a comprehensive collection numbering more than 68,000 works from across the world....
in Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
, the Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
in Minneapolis, the Butler Institute of American Art
Butler Institute of American Art
The Butler Institute of American Art, located on Wick Avenue in Youngstown, Ohio, United States, was the first museum dedicated exclusively to American art. Established by local industrialist and philanthropist Joseph G. Butler, Jr., the museum has been operating pro bono since 1919...
in Youngstown, Ohio
Youngstown, Ohio
Youngstown is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Mahoning County; it also extends into Trumbull County. The municipality is situated on the Mahoning River, approximately southeast of Cleveland and northwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania...
, and many other public and private collections worldwide.
Individual exhibitions
- 1961 Long Island University,New York
- 1963 Thibaud Gallery, New York
- Fischbach GalleryFischbach GalleryThe Fischbach Gallery was founded by Marilyn Cole Fischbach in 1960 in New York City at 799 Madison Avenue. The gallery in its early days became known for hosting the first significant solo exhibitions of now leading art world figures including Alex Katz, Ronald Bladen and Eva Hesse. Knox Martin...
, New York - 1964 Fischbach GalleryFischbach GalleryThe Fischbach Gallery was founded by Marilyn Cole Fischbach in 1960 in New York City at 799 Madison Avenue. The gallery in its early days became known for hosting the first significant solo exhibitions of now leading art world figures including Alex Katz, Ronald Bladen and Eva Hesse. Knox Martin...
, New York - 1965 Fischbach GalleryFischbach GalleryThe Fischbach Gallery was founded by Marilyn Cole Fischbach in 1960 in New York City at 799 Madison Avenue. The gallery in its early days became known for hosting the first significant solo exhibitions of now leading art world figures including Alex Katz, Ronald Bladen and Eva Hesse. Knox Martin...
, New York - Galerie Ileana, Sonnabend, Paris
- Galerie Zwirner, Cologne
- Galerie Neuendorf, Hamburg
- Galerie Muller, Stutgart
- 1966 Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles
- 1967 Fischbach GalleryFischbach GalleryThe Fischbach Gallery was founded by Marilyn Cole Fischbach in 1960 in New York City at 799 Madison Avenue. The gallery in its early days became known for hosting the first significant solo exhibitions of now leading art world figures including Alex Katz, Ronald Bladen and Eva Hesse. Knox Martin...
, New York - Wurttembergischer Kunsterverein, Stuttgart
- Galerie Rolf Ricke, Kassel, Germany
- 1968 Franklin Siden Gallery, Detroit
- Lambert Gallery, Paris
- 1969 Fischbach GalleryFischbach GalleryThe Fischbach Gallery was founded by Marilyn Cole Fischbach in 1960 in New York City at 799 Madison Avenue. The gallery in its early days became known for hosting the first significant solo exhibitions of now leading art world figures including Alex Katz, Ronald Bladen and Eva Hesse. Knox Martin...
, New York - 1971 Paintings 1963-70, Institute of Contemporary Art, PhiladelphiaInstitute of Contemporary Art, PhiladelphiaThe Institute of Contemporary Art or ICA is a contemporary art museum located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The museum is associated with the University of Pennsylvania, and is located on its campus. The Institute is one of the country's leading museums dedicated to exhibiting the innovative...
- Paintings 1963-70, Albright-Knox Art GalleryAlbright-Knox Art GalleryThe Albright-Knox Art Gallery is an art museum located in Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York. The gallery is a major showplace for modern art and contemporary art. It is located directly across the street from Buffalo State College.-History:...
. Buffolo, New York - 1972 Marlborough Gallery, New York
- 1974 Schact Fine Art Centre, Russel Sage College, Troy, New York
- Patricia Moore Gallery, Aspen, Colorado
- Hokin Gallery, Chigago
- 1975 Marlborough Gallery, New York
- Gallery Kingpitcher, Pittsburgh
- 1977 Contemporary Art Forms, Encino, California
- Fiterman Gallery, Minneapolis
- 1978 Neuberger Museum, State University of New York at Purchase
- 1979 Virginia Museum of Fine ArtsVirginia Museum of Fine ArtsThe Virginia Museum of Fine arts, or VMFA, is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, in the United States, which opened in 1936.The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia, while private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the support of specific programs and all...
, Richmond Art Package, Highland Park, Illinois