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Email PageMini-Retrospective
March 13, 2008- April 26, 2008
Reception: March 13, 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Miriam Schapiro
Flomenhaft
547 W 27th StMiriam Schapiro’s life and art are inextricably intertwined, for she has continued to seek her identity as a woman and an artist. Beginning in the 50’s her early paintings, such as Fanfare (1958), exemplify her personal struggle camouflaged beneath an abstract expressionist, complex surface. In her years of intense struggle and before her new image as a staunch feminist, she often utilized the “O” within a painting. In the nucleus of OX (1968), the O was in fact the egg transformed into an octagon. The color in OX, tender shades of apricot, is both invitational and assertive. The Shrine paintings are tower-like, and cabinet-like, their symbolic content created in a period when her future was still uncertain. Shrine (1962) alludes to the house which entrapped her. In this painting, the egg, which we see again, is encased in a dominant phallic form, representing herself, the woman and creative artist.
Miriam was an initiator of the feminist art movement with which she made the fabric of women’s lives into a celebration of joy. Soon after, she was equally essential to the Pattern and Decoration movement. In her paintings and even in her prints she would always incorporate feminine content such as handkerchiefs, doilies, aprons, applied beading and more. She coined the phrase “femmage,” layering materials typically and boldly about and for women. Her work has been rich and complex. A new idea that showed up about 1980 was the Heart. Our Stenciled Heart (1982) throbs with color and texture. Not to be overlooked are Miriam’s spectacular fans. In this exhibit, the fan Asian History (2007), is typical of Miriam’s love of study. History of cultures near and far have fueled her imagination and art.
At one point she began a collaboration series with other artists that lasted 20 years, creating paintings and prints such as the Frida and Me (1990) in our exhibit and the print Popova (1992), that reproduces one of Russian artist Lyubov Popova’s modern clothing designs, and bears an inscription of the artist’s name with saw toothed lettering suggesting the gears of industry.
In the late 80’s and early 90’s Miriam’s imagery expanded to include theaters such as Presenting Eden (1990); puppets as in The Punch and Judy Show (1990); mythic dramas such as Adam and Eve; Minoan snake goddesses in The Twinning of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (1989); and pre-Columbian idols and Menorahs; see the work For Paul Brach (2007).
She has received many honors and awards including The National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Ford Foundation Grant, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the Skowhegan Medal for Collage and the Rockefeller Foundation Grant for Artist’s Residency at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Italy. Ms. Schapiro has been honored by the National Association of Schools of Art, and the National Women’s Caucus for Art. She was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the College Art Association and the Harrison-Hooks Artist Lifetime Achievement Award from the Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland Florida, and the Elan Award from the Women’s Studio Center, New York. The Miriam Schapiro Archives for Women Artists at Rutgers University was established in January 2006.
Her work appears in numerous museum collections in the United States, Europe, Australia and Israel including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC; The Museum of Modern Art, NYC; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; The Brooklyn Museum, NYC; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Louisiana Museum, Denmark; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia; and The Israel Museum, Tel Aviv.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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