|
|
Ad Code: 3
|
from Auction House Records.
Veil of Tears, 1976
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
|
|
Biography from AskART:
| Feminist artist Miriam Schapiro was born in Toronto, Canada in 1923,
growing up in Brooklyn, New York. While in high school in New
York City she studied at the Museum of Modern Art and the Federal Art
Project. She studied at the State University of Iowa, receiving
three degrees there: a B.A. in 1945, M.A. 1946, and M.F.A. in
1949. She has taught at the State University of Iowa; Parsons
School of Design, New York City; University of California, Berkeley;
University of San Diego, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia;
and the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia. Schapiro lives and works in
New York City and East Hampton, Long Island, New York.
Schapiro
found success early as a hard-edge geometric-style painter and was
categorized as a second-generation Abstract Expressionist. In
1962 she began to create "shrine paintings" which differed completely
from previous works, these consisted of a mirror, a female symbol, a
fragment of a great art work, and a crowning arch. These feminist
productions were followed by paintings relating to her own sexual
life. In her abstract illusionistic work she often used the
computer as a creative tool.
In 1972, she participated in
"Womanhouse," a project involving many women artists who presented the
arts and crafts of women (Schapiro's contribution was a doll house,
each room symbolically built to represent her own female world).
Elise LaRose comments about "Womanhouse:" "A decade of personal and
political struggle with feminist issues crystallized in (Schapiro's)
pioneering and collaborative involvement. Co-directing, with Judy
Chicago, the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the
Arts in Valencia, California, they started off the school year by
involving their students in a project which would allow them to project
all their dreams and fantasies by creating an exclusively female
environment in an old house. After renovating the house, they
transformed it with performance and art works that dealt with
specifically feminist issues. They used this explorative process
as a means of restructuring their identities as women artists in a
patriarchal (art) world...
"Since then, Miriam Schapiro has been
giving the history of women's 'covert' art a brightly lit
showcase. The once-tabooed scraps; sequins, buttons, threads,
rick rack, spangles, yarn; silk, taffeta, cotton, burlap, and wool,
were excavated from the musty attics and dredged from the dark closets
of art history. Now, they are assembled and coordinated with
emotional and creative thought into 'femmages.' Having taken
embroidered upholstery out of the parlor, quilts off beds, clothing off
hangers, scrapbooks out of trunks, and tapestries from beneath our
feet, Schapiro re-educates us about a history of buried art, women's
art."
After this project, she created paintings incorporating
handkerchiefs, lace and other fabrics in metaphorical statements of
liberation. As the leading member of the Pattern and Decoration
Movement (or P & D) of the mid '70s, Schapiro incorporated dress,
costume, and decorative patterns into her art. This art movement
challenged traditional Western European art by featuring decorative
patterns and textiles from other cultures such as Chinese, Indian,
Islamic, and Mexican. The use of textiles also served
symbolically of feminine labor. Schapiro's collages, or "femmages," as
she sometimes calls them, included the needlework of other, perhaps
long forgotten women. Schapiro has attempted to break the barrier
between art and craft by reintroducing pattern and decoration into the
modernist art world.
"Femmage," stands for the female laborer's
hand-sewn work (such as embroidery, quilting, cross-stitching, etc.)
that rivals and precedes the "high-art" collage. Her work, "The
Poet #2," combines pattern with painting. Schapiro comments, "I felt
that by making a large canvas magnificent in color, design, and
proportion, filling it with fabrics and quilt blocks, I could raise a
housewife's lowered consciousness." Her involvement with
consciousness-raising efforts, for which she traveled nationwide
encouraging women to form support groups and emerge from isolation,
earned her the nickname "Mimi Appleseed." She continues to
advocate the recognition of women in current art and art history.
Schapiro has received six honorary Doctorate degrees, Grants from the Rockefeller Foundation,
a grant for artists in residency at Bellagio Study Center in
Bellagio, Italy; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Fellowship; the Djerassi Foundation Residency in Woodside, CA;
Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency - Master Class; a National
Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; Ford Foundation Grant at
Tamarind; the Honors Award, The Woman's Caucus for Art; N.Y.
State Teacher's Assn. Certificate of Recognition; N.Y. State
NARAL, 25th Anniversary; a Yaddo Fellowship.
Some publications include:
Thalia Gouma Peterson. Shaping the Fragments of Art and Life. Abrams
Rosen, Randy and Brawer, Catherine. Making Their Mark; Women Artist Move Into the Mainstream, 1970-85. Abbeville Press, NY, 1989
Rubinstein, Charlotte Streifer. American Women Artists; from Early Times to the Present. Avon Books, NY, 1982
Gauma-Peterson, Thalia. "The Theater of Life an Illusion in Miram Schapiro's Recent Work." Arts Magazine, March 1986
Cummings, Paul. Dictionary of Contemporary American Artists, Fifth Edition. St. Martin's Press, NY, 1988
Emanuel, Muriel et al, eds. Contemporary Artists. St. Martin's Press/Macmillan, NY, 1983
Sources:
Les Krantz, American Artists, Illustrated Survey of Leading Contemporary Artists
http://www.artgallery.sbc.edu/highlights/schapiro.html
http://www.albany.edu/museum/wwwmuseum/crossing/artist25.htm
http://acg2.fullcoll.edu/artcollection/htmlPAGES/ArtistIndexHTML/schapiroBIO.htm
http://www.goshen.edu/art/DeptPgs/schapiro.htm
|
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|