Robert Archambeau
@robertarchambeau.bsky.social
Some sort of writer.
Out now from MadHat Press!
March 27, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Out now from MadHat Press!
ART I LIKE #50: Jeremy Frey's baskets seen on a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago. Always happy when basketry or quilting or glass-blowing gets a shout-out from a major arts organization. The play with form and pattern, the care of craft! Like pots, the baskets really come alive in groups. #art
January 1, 2025 at 1:56 PM
ART I LIKE #50: Jeremy Frey's baskets seen on a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago. Always happy when basketry or quilting or glass-blowing gets a shout-out from a major arts organization. The play with form and pattern, the care of craft! Like pots, the baskets really come alive in groups. #art
Reginato chez Archambeau!
December 31, 2024 at 2:27 PM
Reginato chez Archambeau!
ART I LIKE #49: Peter Reginato's sculpture is sproingy & colorful while still very modern. When he paints in enamels—pouring and dripping he makes his own visual language out of bars of color, loops, lobes, and lines. I love the alternating crowded and open spaces and—wow the color pallatte! #art
December 31, 2024 at 2:27 PM
ART I LIKE #49: Peter Reginato's sculpture is sproingy & colorful while still very modern. When he paints in enamels—pouring and dripping he makes his own visual language out of bars of color, loops, lobes, and lines. I love the alternating crowded and open spaces and—wow the color pallatte! #art
ART I LIKE #47: Cate Simmons, Persephone's Journey. Kara Walker's not the only artist breathing life into the old silhouette form. I proposed this for the annual English Department tee shirt one year, but a colleague really put her foot down about Virginia Woolf, so we went that way instead. #art
December 30, 2024 at 3:06 PM
ART I LIKE #47: Cate Simmons, Persephone's Journey. Kara Walker's not the only artist breathing life into the old silhouette form. I proposed this for the annual English Department tee shirt one year, but a colleague really put her foot down about Virginia Woolf, so we went that way instead. #art
ART I LIKE #46: In a film I once saw a curator ashamed to admit how much Emily Young's work won him over—carving stone was, in his opinion, old hat. Young likes the work to look old—fragments are part of the aesthetic. She also understands that stone by itself is hard to beat for beauty. #sculpture
December 29, 2024 at 2:05 PM
ART I LIKE #46: In a film I once saw a curator ashamed to admit how much Emily Young's work won him over—carving stone was, in his opinion, old hat. Young likes the work to look old—fragments are part of the aesthetic. She also understands that stone by itself is hard to beat for beauty. #sculpture
ART I LIKE #45: Leopold Segedin, Follow the Leader. Part of a series set in west side Chicago where Segedin grew up in. The women in this image belong in their environment, either matching its colors or complimenting them. The grey-suited men are as out of place in color as in gesture. #chicagoart
December 28, 2024 at 12:47 PM
ART I LIKE #45: Leopold Segedin, Follow the Leader. Part of a series set in west side Chicago where Segedin grew up in. The women in this image belong in their environment, either matching its colors or complimenting them. The grey-suited men are as out of place in color as in gesture. #chicagoart
ART I LIKE #44: Birds, Eggs & Dominoes with Pyramid, 1963. Abercrombie was known as the "queen of the bohemian artists" in midcentury Chicago & had a vocabulary of figures—cats, moons, clouds, pyramids–that she turned into landscapes charged with meaning always about to be revealed. #surrealism #art
December 27, 2024 at 12:44 PM
ART I LIKE #44: Birds, Eggs & Dominoes with Pyramid, 1963. Abercrombie was known as the "queen of the bohemian artists" in midcentury Chicago & had a vocabulary of figures—cats, moons, clouds, pyramids–that she turned into landscapes charged with meaning always about to be revealed. #surrealism #art
ART I LIKE #43. Martin Ramirez doesn't get much play outside of the outsider art scene, but wow, does the work reward attention. He's obsessive about trains but what he's really great at is building up a composition out of curved lines that form ridges, tunnels, funnels of smoke. #art #outsiderart
December 26, 2024 at 3:34 PM
ART I LIKE #43. Martin Ramirez doesn't get much play outside of the outsider art scene, but wow, does the work reward attention. He's obsessive about trains but what he's really great at is building up a composition out of curved lines that form ridges, tunnels, funnels of smoke. #art #outsiderart
ART I LIKE #42 - Christmas edition. You want a nativity scene, you've got your pick of good ones. I like Fra Angelico's, partly because it has wonderful halos and glorious Byzantine gold, but it keeps the scene modest & low key. Also, it puts animals at the visual center. Why? Dunno. #art #nativity
December 25, 2024 at 1:58 PM
ART I LIKE #41: Gustavo Perez is probably the leading ceramic artist in Mexico. His vessels bend, fold, crease & open up in surprising places, really capturing the fluid nature of clay before it's fired. All of this contrasts with the gloss and shine of flat colored glaze. Love it! #art #ceramics
December 24, 2024 at 2:29 PM
ART I LIKE #40: WW1 turned Louis Monza into a pacifist & his figures shelter in little pockets of safety in a strange world. Sometimes they're trapped, too. The colors in 1968's Nightmare seem at odds with the title. But the faces in the landscape are right out of De Quincey's opium nightmares. #art
December 23, 2024 at 11:58 AM
ART I LIKE #40: WW1 turned Louis Monza into a pacifist & his figures shelter in little pockets of safety in a strange world. Sometimes they're trapped, too. The colors in 1968's Nightmare seem at odds with the title. But the faces in the landscape are right out of De Quincey's opium nightmares. #art
ART I LIKE #39: Caspar David Friedrich's 1818 Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog has mystery & vast sublimity —but you know what's best about it? It graces the cover of a Mekons album that some of the band signed for me last night when they dropped by to pick up a Wesley Kimler collage. #artsurprise
December 22, 2024 at 1:53 PM
ART I LIKE #39: Caspar David Friedrich's 1818 Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog has mystery & vast sublimity —but you know what's best about it? It graces the cover of a Mekons album that some of the band signed for me last night when they dropped by to pick up a Wesley Kimler collage. #artsurprise
ART I LIKE #38: I see Fred Greene Carpenter's landscapes from time to time & have a little one from his trip to the holy land. 1955's "The Valley of Hinom" takes us to a place of dark mojo in the Bible. Figures are stiff & formal, perspective flat, and that spash or sacrificial red ominous.#art
December 21, 2024 at 1:33 PM
ART I LIKE #38: I see Fred Greene Carpenter's landscapes from time to time & have a little one from his trip to the holy land. 1955's "The Valley of Hinom" takes us to a place of dark mojo in the Bible. Figures are stiff & formal, perspective flat, and that spash or sacrificial red ominous.#art
ART I LIKE #37: Arnold Saper, Satomi, etching 1970s. Saper loves to draw & his etchings—often self-portraits or dragonflies—usually have a loose line. Early ones like this have a more precise look. I love the contrast in values—the hair vs. all that white. I believe this shows his wife. #Canadianart
December 20, 2024 at 1:46 PM
ART I LIKE #37: Arnold Saper, Satomi, etching 1970s. Saper loves to draw & his etchings—often self-portraits or dragonflies—usually have a loose line. Early ones like this have a more precise look. I love the contrast in values—the hair vs. all that white. I believe this shows his wife. #Canadianart
ART I LIKE #36: Remedios Varo The Juggler 1956. Varo's architecture remind me of de Chirico, except her space is alway more populated. One of her signature images is a small, confined space, often a carriage or vehicle sheltering us in a strange world. I'm sure her refugee experience plays into it.
December 19, 2024 at 12:51 PM
ART I LIKE #36: Remedios Varo The Juggler 1956. Varo's architecture remind me of de Chirico, except her space is alway more populated. One of her signature images is a small, confined space, often a carriage or vehicle sheltering us in a strange world. I'm sure her refugee experience plays into it.
ART I LIKE #35: Anish Kapoor, Cloud Gate, 2006. I can't think of a more successful public sculpture from this century. Unlike with Chicago's big Picasso, people didn't need to learn to love this: they were in from day one. First you see the city reflected, then you walk up & see yourself. #publicart
December 18, 2024 at 2:40 PM
ART I LIKE #35: Anish Kapoor, Cloud Gate, 2006. I can't think of a more successful public sculpture from this century. Unlike with Chicago's big Picasso, people didn't need to learn to love this: they were in from day one. First you see the city reflected, then you walk up & see yourself. #publicart
ART I LIKE 34: Japanese prints! What’s not to love? This one is all about the contrast between interior and the big open world. The bowl & draped cloth imply an intimate world protected & confined by those walls. And beyond? It’d like one of those European ‘world landscapes’—all possibility. #art
December 17, 2024 at 12:38 PM
ART I LIKE 34: Japanese prints! What’s not to love? This one is all about the contrast between interior and the big open world. The bowl & draped cloth imply an intimate world protected & confined by those walls. And beyond? It’d like one of those European ‘world landscapes’—all possibility. #art
ART I LIKE #33. Caillebotte gets how to use those verticals to make work feel like work: a long day of scraping. He elongates one worker’s arms via forced perspective to make us feel the effort. Not a lot of color to give relief, but there’s that one tilted head: cracking wise or just yapping? #art
December 16, 2024 at 2:35 PM
ART I LIKE #33. Caillebotte gets how to use those verticals to make work feel like work: a long day of scraping. He elongates one worker’s arms via forced perspective to make us feel the effort. Not a lot of color to give relief, but there’s that one tilted head: cracking wise or just yapping? #art
ART INLIKE #32. Turner, Surf, 1842. And by “1842” I mean “1842?!?” Turner was so ahead of the game in letting brushstrokes look like brushstrokes that a story does round of a dowager pointing to a blurry bit on a canvas and howling “WHAT is THAT?” & the artist replying “That, madam, is paint” #art
December 15, 2024 at 1:29 PM
ART INLIKE #32. Turner, Surf, 1842. And by “1842” I mean “1842?!?” Turner was so ahead of the game in letting brushstrokes look like brushstrokes that a story does round of a dowager pointing to a blurry bit on a canvas and howling “WHAT is THAT?” & the artist replying “That, madam, is paint” #art
ART I LIKE #31: Charles Ray is a fave among 'one liner' artists... people whose work doubles down on one big idea. I recall seeing his 1993 Fire Truck outside the MCA & thinking the place was burning down. But the truck looked off... it's a blown up version of a toy. You can buy a model! #art
December 14, 2024 at 3:45 PM
ART I LIKE #31: Charles Ray is a fave among 'one liner' artists... people whose work doubles down on one big idea. I recall seeing his 1993 Fire Truck outside the MCA & thinking the place was burning down. But the truck looked off... it's a blown up version of a toy. You can buy a model! #art
ART I LIKE #30. Edgy & unnerving, Kara Walker's 1994 ‘Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred b’tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart' took silhouettes used for genteel 19th c. portraits & used them to show the power dynamics of race. I'll never forget it. #art
December 13, 2024 at 2:16 PM
ART I LIKE #30. Edgy & unnerving, Kara Walker's 1994 ‘Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred b’tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart' took silhouettes used for genteel 19th c. portraits & used them to show the power dynamics of race. I'll never forget it. #art
ART I LIKE #29: Pietro Liberi The Venetian Victory Over the Turks in the Dardanelli. In 1656 Venice trounced the Turks & did not want you to forget it. This vast stonker of a painting launched the "instructions to a painter" genre of poetry, huge in the 17th/18th c. and utterly forgotten today. #art
December 12, 2024 at 2:47 PM
ART I LIKE #29: Pietro Liberi The Venetian Victory Over the Turks in the Dardanelli. In 1656 Venice trounced the Turks & did not want you to forget it. This vast stonker of a painting launched the "instructions to a painter" genre of poetry, huge in the 17th/18th c. and utterly forgotten today. #art
ART I LIKE #28. Autumn on the seine at argenteuil by Claude Monet (1873). I believe it was Cezanne who said "Monet is only an eye—but my God, what an eye!" And it's true—there's no deliberate intellectual program to the work, still less is there moralizing. I'm good with this. #art #impressionism
December 11, 2024 at 2:18 PM
ART I LIKE #28. Autumn on the seine at argenteuil by Claude Monet (1873). I believe it was Cezanne who said "Monet is only an eye—but my God, what an eye!" And it's true—there's no deliberate intellectual program to the work, still less is there moralizing. I'm good with this. #art #impressionism
ART I LIKE #27: Christo Running Fence 1976. I saw the film of the making this astonishing thing when I was a kid and was astonished at how angry it made some of the locals, and gladdened when one of the ranchers through whose land it ran declared it so beautiful he slept beside it. I would too. #art
December 10, 2024 at 6:46 PM
ART I LIKE #27: Christo Running Fence 1976. I saw the film of the making this astonishing thing when I was a kid and was astonished at how angry it made some of the locals, and gladdened when one of the ranchers through whose land it ran declared it so beautiful he slept beside it. I would too. #art