Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. I bought a ticket to the world but now I've come back again.
WORDS
Swing Time (1936)
Watercolor on 9” x 12” watercolor paper
#9 in the 40 movies I haven’t seen from the AFI 100!
A man takes his son out to a field and says, “You see this field? I planted all of this, harvested it all, but do they call me John the Farmer? No. That fence out there, I built that all by hand, drove every post myself. But do they call me John the Fence Builder? No. But you have sex with just ONE goat…”
That’s this movie to me. It was my first time seeing a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie and I was immediately sucked in by their undeniable charisma and unreal dancing. But is that what I’ll remember about this? No. I’ve never understood tap dancing at all, it just seemed like someone banging their feet on the floor but watching Astaire do it, I was like, oh, this is ART. But is that what will stick with me when I think of this movie? No.
Those stories about how great Astaire was but Ginger Rogers did all the same steps in high heels and in reverse, it’s astounding to see that play out. Truly magical. But is that the overwhelming memory of this movie? No. There’s an unmistakable chemistry between the two and the love story slowly playing out, leading to their first kiss is delightful. Is that what I’ll always talk about when I refer to this movie?
Yeah, but not for the reason you think.
Because immediately after this first kiss Astaire starts gleefully smearing blackface on as he prepares for the movie’s biggest set piece where, yeah, he’s got that crap on his face throughout. It’s JARRING. It’s overwhelming. It’s awful and it’s a goddam shame it’s in this otherwise spectacular movie. Hell, the number itself is a technical marvel but you’ve gotta be fully divorced from a capacity for empathy to not feel utterly gross watching it play out.
Like, it was tough making a painting for this. I wanted to speak to the wonder of watching the two dance, but, like…BLACKFACE. This movie is an egregious example of The Rule of Goats and good lordamighty I really hope that I won’t have to sit through any more blackface moments on the list. That crap’s exhausting.
Watch clips of them dancing if you’re really interested. Watch one of their other movies. But I can’t recommend this at all.
Next week: The irreverent Bringing Up Baby!
Here’s a preview of Thursday’s new Swerve Strickland painting.
UPCOMING AEW/PWT PAINTINGS
Swerve Strickland
Jon Moxley. What if? What would you do? I’d probably just walk around, trying to make sense of this senseless world.
Hechicero
Marina Shafir
Darby Allin
Card subject to change.
Rob’s Art on ShopAEW
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Rob and Jason Arnett's novella Rudow Can't Fail!
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Rob’s prints and shirts at Pro Wrestling Tees
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Bluesky
Cara
YouTube
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Katy’s book Oldest Kansas City
WHAT I LIKED THIS WEEK
The world’s favorite new show Strip Law debuted on Netflix on Friday. The setup is that it’s about a law office on the Las Vegas Strip, with the young lawyer Lincoln (yes, a Lincoln lawyer) trying to get out of his mom’s shadow. But really it’s a springboard for solid joke after solid joke with tons of sight gags happening in the background. The closest comparison I can think of is Bojack Horseman, but without the low emotional lows that show had. Horny California Raisins. VR HR training. The firm’s mascot Lawbert. Magicians vs Animals: To the Death. The other Cornholio. Drunk little kids. The real Santa Claus. The other Santa Claus battling King Kong. A definitely-not-broken p***y. It’s…something, man. It’s really something. I don’t even know how to describe the plot of the season finale.
“Hey, have you read the new Cosby book?”
“The what now?”
I finished the audiobook for Blacktop Wasteland by SA Cosby while working and it’s perfect. A wheelman who’s tried to go straight finds himself in ever-worsening hard times and decides to take on one more job to save his family. Obviously, everything goes wrong to ever-worsening stakes but it’s all told so emotionally true with every character having three-dimensional and valid motivations for the actions they’re taking. It’s like if Unforgiven was set in modern day South Carolina with a black lead, deconstructing the crime thriller genre the same way Unforgiven did for Westerns. Highly, highly recommended.
Absolute Wonder Woman by Kelly Thompson, Hayden Sherman and Matias Bergara is a wonderful reimagining of the character. In this new universe, Diana is raised in Hades by Circe instead of on Paradise Island with the Amazons. She’s still pure of heart, but in a way informed by constant trauma. She was raised in Hell, trying to live her life in a way that she can find Paradise. But also, she kicks a lot of monster butt. In this volume, she enters a sort of Area 51 that’s more of a minotaur’s labyrinth to free all of the people and entities held prisoner there. Sherman and for a couple issues Bergara show all of this so beautifully, doing some of the most exciting art in comics right now.
Yesterday morning I read True-Man the Maximortal volume 3 by Rick Veitch, his latest self-published book. This series is both a satire of American pop culture but also a meditation on society as a whole. The idea is that an entity has entered the real world and has taken the form of a Superman-like character. How would this truly affect everything, but all told in dry humor sort of way. Also, Veitch is doing some of the best work of his career here, which is no light statement to make.
THIS WEEK’S 4×6 WARMUP PAINTINGS
Another skull week! Skulls are cool! THERE’S ONE IN YOUR HEAD RIGHT NOW.
A couple weeks ago my friend Jake Black invited me to speak to his writing class (about how I do my newsletter, but the conversation always steers towards the art) and one of his students asked how I stay productive if the creativity isn’t flowing. Here’s how I answered:
The electric company doesn’t care if I’m struggling with my art. Sometimes I have to make a piece I’m not particularly attached to because I gotta pay them bills so my butt stays in the chair until it’s done.
I do little warmup paintings each day (like the ones above) to be creative for the sake of creativity and that helps a lot. That said, I do know if it’s going to be a slog that day if the warmup feels like a chore, too.
I try to find something about the painting that keeps my interest, even if I’m not feeling the subject in that moment. Techniques, tools, color combinations, all of those things can at least make the process engaging. Sometimes it’s the journey and not the destination!
I also have to recognize that potential customers may not share my opinion about a piece and I allow them to have their own relationship with the art. Throughout my career I’v had paintings I thought were real stinkers but they turned out to be someone’s favorite. Their opinion is valid too.
Therapy. The environment that made me want to create other worlds to disappear into to excape my reality is the same environment I talk about every week in therapy. Managing myself allows me to manage my work.
My overall philosophy is that as artists we’re making a body of work and not individual pieces. If one’s not clicking, that’s fine. There’s always the next one!
What if I told you those are ALL art books?
YOU GOOD?
The true hidden gem at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is the Spencer Art Reference Library. It’s an open-to-the-public collection of over 270,000(!) publications related to art from all over the world. I’ve never encountered anything like it. I spent a couple hours there on Thursday morning for the first time, just trying to wrap my head around it, that this place exists.
A book jumped out at me as I was browsing the stacks, ‘A Dictionary of Russian & Soviet Artists, 1420-1970’ by John Milner. Listen, the only Russian art I really knew about was Communist propaganda posters so I was going in blind on this topic WHICH IS SO EXCITING. When I woke up on Thursday morning I didn’t plan on becoming obsessed with late-Tsarist/ early-Soviet ballet costume designs but that’s where I’m at now.
And that’s just one book out of over 270,000!
I heard a thing years ago about how director Denis Villeneuve banned his art department for Dune from doing any research online, telling them that they had to only use libraries. The thinking there is that as big as the internet is, it’s still very limited and your imagination will become equally limited. If your initial research comes from a different pool, your art will stand out from everything else.
That’s what I had in my mind when I went into the library on Thursday, hoping I’d have that sort of experience.
And friend?
I did.
Love you more,
Rob
PS: Trans rights are human rights.