Allan D'Arcangelo became connected to the Pop-Art movement in the 60's with the exhibition of a work called "Marilyn", a piece which featured the face of Marilyn Monroe with only lettered slits where the facial features should have been. To the side of this work there were the missing facial features, lettered to correspond to the slits. This sort of social critique is one that is not uncommon to the construction of Pop-Art, which much of the time has its focus pinned on the social sphere of that country in which it is generated, and one great focal point of the social sphere can be found in the form of public icons. Though these pieces seem to be poignant social commentaries, these are not the works that D'Arcangelo will come to be known for. It will be the series of highway paintings that come to be seen as D'Arcangelo's claim to fame.
The paintings from this series depict many of the highways of the United States in a very perspective driven series of works. The next series that D'Arcangelo woud do would involve the abstracted inclusion of roadblocks into the one-point perspective view of the highways that we had seen in his earlier work. These next series would embody Allan's desire to delve deeper into the realm of abstraction, and will play with the notion of abstraction and what is seen. Through out all of these series of increasing abstraction, the one-point perspective of the highway is never fully obstructed, but rather it can be seen through the wall of abstraction that is continually being built up around it. D'Arcangelo does not give up the creation of seen items, he comes back to the subject matter of highways in the early 70's and creates a large series of fairly simplified landscapes of american highway spaces and other slices of americana. Reborn from the ashes of abstraction, D'Arcangelo always seems to be interested in the perspective allowed by views of long stretches, such as highway expanses, and this influence does not seem to shake loose from his creative process at any point.
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