Miriam Schapiro
The André Emmerich Years
Paintings from 1957–76
The André Emmerich Years
Paintings from 1957–76
Essay by Maddy Henkin
Eric Firestone Press 2023
A 1958 review of Miriam Schapiro’s exhibition at André Emmerich Gallery begins by reporting what is on view “in her first one-man show.” While perhaps an innocuous phrase in that decade, one might also sense gender panic in the critic’s opening line. The artist’s first one-man show at the gallery was also the gallery’s first one-woman show. Artists who had shows at prominent New York galleries, with few exceptions up to this point, were men. Describing this as a “one-man show” was not the result of editorial oversight or fact-checking blunder; after all, the second word in the review is “her,” highlighting the artist’s gender. Nor was it a mischaracterization of the display. In order to show at this venue and in this way, Schapiro had to assemble a body of work that could pass for a one-man show. Simply put, the art world was not interested in women’s work. This is not to say that the work of women was wholly excluded from the mainstream art world’s attention. However, for critics, collectors, dealers, and curators to take their art seriously, it could not announce itself as women’s work.
Schapiro found a loophole. In 1971, establishing her public image as a feminist, she wrote that she painted in an abstract expressionist style, “but really, I confess now—I was cheating. It was the cheating which allowed me to survive.” 2 Looking back on her earlier career from the thick of the women’s movement, she describes fitting imagery that covert addressed women’s lives into a dominant paradigm of abstraction. While her art from the 1950s and 1960s reflects the prevailing styles of the day (abstract expressionism, abstract illusionism, hard-edge painting, and geometric abstraction), she used covert
imagery throughout her practice in order to create works that were true to her identity as a woman and an artist. In this way, Schapiro eschewed the “authenticity” of heroic abstraction and circumvented the “purity” geometric forms. Ultimately, she created paintings that were true to her experience of performing multiple identities simultaneously. Plainly, the artist could be a woman and still mount a one-man show.
Detail of Nightwood, 1957 oil on canvas, 60 x 51 inches
Schapiro was born in 1923 in Toronto, Canada, but was raised in New York from the time she was an infant. In high school, she took classes at the Museum of Modern Art with the groundbreaking art educator Victor D’Amico and evening adult classes with the Works Progress Administration. Despite such storied educational opportunities, she often stated that her experiences at home had the greater impact on her art. As a girl, Schapiro was acutely aware of her mother’s and grandmothers’ duties and confinement within the home.
She recognized the imbalance between the domestic lives of her matriarchs and the public, professional lives of her father and grandfathers. At the same time, she admired the handicrafts created around her. In 1943, she enrolled at the University of Iowa, where she would eventually earn her BA, MA, and MFA. In 1946, she met fellow painter Paul Brach, and the two married later that year. Undoubtedly, Schapiro’s formal training shaped her practice. Looking back on the period, however, she tended to highlight the significance of her newfound independence: being away from her family for the first time and meeting Brach. As with her adolescence, despite gaining a formal pedigree it was her personal experiences that would set her up to create profound, introspective, and innovative art.
In 1952, Schapiro and Brach returned to New York and moved into a Greenwich Village apartment with several artist neighbors. Schapiro began exhibiting at the defining venues of the 1950s New York art scene, including the Tanager Gallery, which was an artists’ cooperative, and the Stable Gallery, where she took part in numerous annual exhibitions. In 1957, she participated in MoMA’s three-person New Talent show, alongside George Cohen
and Gabriel Kohn. While this was a milestone for Schapiro, it was hardly her debut. In fact, an Arts review of the show challenged the museum’s designation of these artists as “new talent,” stating that “[t]he two painters and the sculptor exhibiting at present will already be familiar to assiduous gallery-goers, but there is scarcely space here for discussion of a policy which seems to parallel the function of the commercial galleries, rather than supplementing it by offering the opportunity for exhibition to artists who have no gallery outlet.” 3 By the time of her first solo show in New York, she was a known entity who had built up an exhibition history and reputation that granted her an enviable position.
While Schapiro attained her early career success, she was grappling with the gender inequities within her social circle. She and Brach both spent time at the Cedar Tavern and The Club (of which Brach was a member and Schapiro was not) with others in the art scene. Through the art historical record, we know these figures included Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Clement Greenberg. But in Schapiro’s recollections of the period, she was more prone to name her compatriots as “Harold and May Rosenberg, De Kooning and Elaine, Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, Leo and Illana [sic].” 4 At the time, her ability to participate in this social circle was crucial to her being taken seriously as an artist. In order to understand her work of the period, however, we need to see not just the ways that Schapiro refined her style as a member of this group, but also how she found her voice through her particular position within it. Recalling her early years in New York, she wrote, “I began to learn the game. It was called: Making it on the art scene. The players were men and women. The rules prescribed that the men were to make decisions, pick shows, support each other, bring messages about money, sales and shows to each other. The women were to wait until tapped by the men.” 5
In her 1958 exhibition, Schapiro presented lush abstractions. Pastel washes create a sense of atmosphere and expressive, saturated brushwork hints at the figures emerging from her tableaus. In Nightwood for example, disembodied limbs seem to come forth from a dark night sky in quick, gestural hints done by an artist who had taken life drawing classes since she was a teenager. The unresolved figuration alludes to the artist’s nascent identity. In addition to working from a model for decades, Schapiro had posed for paintings at a critical stage of her career at the University of Iowa. Her works from the 1950s wrestle with being both subject and object, enacting a troubled relationship with the gaze. By 1959, her figures became more solid, though they remained illusive and shifting. In Mother and Child, a figure composed of a wash of orange sits, as if floating, on a cerulean plane. Thin black outlines delineate limbs, faces, and torsos. Yet, it is impossible to tell where the mother ends and the child begins. Schapiro had given birth to her son, Peter, four years prior to creating this work and felt consumed by the labor of childcare. With its complimentary colors
and deft exploration of the tension between figuration and abstraction, this work fit comfortably in the milieu of second generation abstract expressionism, a period defined by the reintegration of symbolism and figuration after a period of non-objective action painting. Simultaneously, the work takes as its theme a women’s life. Not only does the painting’s narrative center on a mother and child, but it visualizes the difficulties of the relationship. The two figures are intertwined such that neither can be independent, echoing how Schapiro’s identity as an artist was circumscribed by motherhood at this time.
By 1960, Schapiro replaced much of her figuration with symbolic imagery. In this period, she became devoted to open forms—negative spaces that she would eventually theorize as “central core” imagery or vaginal iconography. 6 Her first work to include the box form was The Game (1960, pl. 1). This piece instigated a transitional body of work between her abstractions of the 1950s and shrines made between 1961 and 1963. Many of these shrines include an egg shape, a symbol of motherhood as well as the potential of becoming. In works such as The Game , The Game Is Yours (1962, now called Dialogue, private collection), The Law (1960, private collection), and Reprieve (1961, pl. 9), she places a phallic skyscraper within a depopulated ground, often allowing the raw canvas to function as background. While some art historians have interpreted titles that allude to games and laws as being about manipulating elements of form and abstraction, Schapiro’s remarks about the “game” of the art world undermine the idea that these are selfreferential studies about painting. Instead, in The Game we can see her playing her professional game of making it as an artist: she abides by the rules of abstraction while replacing the masculine positive form with a feminine negative space. In her shrines, she further refined these ideas, stacking self-contained images of an opening or
window (often rendered in a metallic paint to resemble a mirror), an egg, some art historical or personal image, and, at the top, a metallic dome reminiscent of a Byzantine icon. In other works, like Shrine: Homage to M.L. (1963, pl. 8), she combines the feminine forms of windows and eggs with classic art historical references, like the Mona Lisa quoted in this painting.
Though her hard-edge works from the later 1960s seem to be a radical departure from the shrines, Schapiro connected the two bodies of work by distilling the open forms in her shrines into the open forms of minimalist paintings such as Empire: Sixteen Windows (1965, pl. 7). In 1967, she moved with Brach, to La Jolla, California, to join the faculty of the newly formed art department at the University of California, San Diego. The following year she created her quintessential central core painting with Big Ox (1968, pl. 13) In 1974, Schapiro said in a public lecture that OX was her “explicit cunt painting” but previously she had described it in a less shocking way.7 When the painting was exhibited in a two-person exhibition at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, Thomas Garver wrote in
the catalogue that “the structure of Big Ox is based on the sort of landscapes much in evidence in Southern California.” 8 The colors are derived from these vistas, while the structure, with its open center and outstretched arms, is meant to draw the viewer in, operating as an abstract landscape. Elsewhere, Schapiro wrote that “the origin of the form OX is simply the superimposition of the letter O on the letter X.” 9 By this period of her career, she had become more eager to participate in the game of the art world, shifting her work’s meaning to suit her venue.
Over the next few years, Schapiro experimented not only with form, but also with emergent technologies. She called La Jolla an “essentially scientific community,” 10 a social context that proved to be as important as the picturesque environment.11 At UCSD, her only interlocutors were her male counterparts on the faculty, but they did not understand the feminist meaning of her work and she did not discuss it with them.12 Instead, she took advantage of her scientific campus and approached people who could help her integrate new technologies into her work. She manipulated the form of her painting
Ox to create related paintings and drawings showing the shape rotated in perspective. Desiring a “more eccentric version” of the painting, the artist worked with Jeffrey Raskin, a computer scientist by training, who was teaching art and computer science at UCSD. Raskin programmed Schapiro’s idea into a computer, which rotated the shape and generated print outs of new imagery.13 Following this, she worked with different collaborators. Each piece began with a simple hand-drawn shape related to her central core imagery, which an assistant would translate into numbers representing points on a grid. Custom software would use these points to rotate the shape in space, generating fifty views of the original drawing. While experiments in technology often denote mastery and the domain of men, Schapiro’s evocation of female imagery tempers these associations. Though she encountered feminist ideas when she arrived in California, she became active in the women’s movement when she moved to Los Angeles to run the Feminist Art Program (FAP) at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) with Judy Chicago. The program came to CalArts in 1971 as a radical curriculum for women art students, replacing the dominant contemporary form of teacher-student pedagogy with non-hierarchical collaboration and consciousness raising.14 In 1972, the women of the first class at CalArts opened Womanhouse in a condemned home in Hollywood. For a period of fourteen months, while she was consumed with her involvement in Womanhouse and the Women’s Movement, Schapiro stopped painting. Upon returning to her studio practice, she began integrating fabrics into her art. She recalled that when she looked at her first painting with incorporated textiles, she was “absolutely horrified” that she “could make anything so corny.” 15 Her early fabric collage paintings fit scraps of fabric into complex compositions, often with backgrounds of hard-edge or expressionist painting. In works such as Curtains (1972, pl. 14) or Voyage (1973, pl. 15), she arranged fabric scraps into abstractions.
In the 1970s, Miriam Schapiro began to describe her work as femmage This term, which she coined in a 1978 essay written with Melissa Meyer, brought together the feminine legacies of hobbyist art practices and the avant-garde legacy of collage. At the time, Schapiro applied the term retrospectively to the work she had been creating since 1972, when she first put the “stuff” of women’s domestic lives onto canvas. These pieces, which subsumed doilies, hankies, lace, and the like into compositions, represented a shift in her practice. In her femmages, she announced her allegiance to feminism, aligning herself with the women’s art movement and women’s liberation. They solidified her place within a burgeoning art movement—though for some they were a step too far, pushing beyond the artistic mainstream and its tenets of formalism. In 1975, Schapiro returned to New York and knew that her next show at Emmerich, which would ultimately be her last, would need to announce her return to the scene. In this show, she exhibited her monumental Anatomy of a Kimono (1975–76, Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich) alongside other femmage works. She felt that her exhibition at Emmerich was her opportunity to show her peers “how good I was at being an artist myself” after her stint on the West Coast. For
Schapiro, the Emmerich gallery was not only a commercial venue, but a space where she could experiment, present an ever-evolving practice, and prove herself as an artist. With this sentiment, it is clear that even in her most feminine mode of painting, she was unwilling to let go of her desire to prove herself and reach success as an artist.
The tension between the masculine and feminine sides of Schapiro played out throughout her career. Her earlier work, dating to the mid-1950s, features the same concerns of her femmages. To be sure, the sewn or cut-and-pasted materials present in many of her later works are important for femmage. However, many of the thematic elements that define femmage for Schapiro are consistent across decades of her practice. Additionally, though she only began working with collage materials in the 1970s, by the 1950s, she was using external materials, whether press images, art historical references, or domestic references, as her artistic foundation. In 1958, she took part in an exhibition at Emmerich entitled Artists as Collectors . For this show, several of the gallery’s artists lent the collected material that inspired their work. Among others in the show, Adolph Gottlieb and Jacques Lipchitz presented non-Western sculptures, while Theodoros Stamos lent Tiffany glass. Schapiro, on the other hand, displayed a
opposite Schapiro became known as “Mimi Appleseed” for her role in championing women’s art and her leadership in the women’s art movement. Courtesy of Miriam Schapiro Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries
right Schapiro with her contribution to Artists as Collectors at André Emmerich Gallery, 1958. Photo © Lee Boltin / Bridgeman Images
bulletin board with cut-out images ranging from a reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon to a film still of Charlie Chaplin and a paper doll. The incongruities of the high and low in her display speak to the contradictions of her practice. She valued mass culture, modernist art, and the artifacts of domestic life equally. Throughout her career, Schapiro used all of these types of images as source material, cloaking the feminine beneath acceptable high art. Her audacity in showing her paper ephemera beside collections of travel trophies, fine design, and modernist art was just one more example of her successfully playing the game.
Notes
1. Sidney Geist, “Month in Review,” Arts, March 1958, 53.
2. Miriam Schapiro, “Out of Isolation,” Everywoman 2, no. 7 (18) (May 7, 1971): 22.
3. Martica Sawin, “New Talent—Cohen, Kohn, Schapiro,” Arts, May 1957, 49.
4. Schapiro is referring to Leo Castelli and Ileana Sonnabend. Miriam Schapiro Papers, Institute for Women and Art, Rutgers University Libraries, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
5. Miriam Schapiro, “Out of Isolation,” Everywoman 2, no. 7 (18) (May 7, 1971): 22.
6. Miriam Schapiro and Judy Chicago, “Female Imagery,” Womanspace Journal 1, no. 3 (Summer 1973): 11–14.
7. Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Miriam Schapiro: Shaping the Fragments of Art and Life (New York: Harry N. Abrams Publishers, 1999), 64.
8. Thomas Garver, “Miriam Schapiro,” in Paul Brach & Miriam Schapiro (Balboa, CA: Newport Harbor Art Museum, 1969), 28.
9. Miriam Schapiro, Untitled Document for Exhibition of Computer Work, c. 1970, box 32, folder 58, Miriam Schapiro Papers. MC 1411. Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries.
10. Miriam Schapiro, “Plan for Computer Paintings,” in Miriam Schapiro: The Shrine, The Computer, and The Dollhouse, ed. Moira Roth (La Jolla, California: Mandeville Art Gallery, University of California, San Diego, 1975), 19.
11. UCSD had been founded in 1960 as a graduate institution of sciences and has long emphasized science and technology. Since the 1960s, San Diego has also been home to numerous medical research institutes, technology firms, and military defense contractors.
12. “From One Struggle to Another.”
13. Miriam Schapiro, “Untitled Document for Exhibition of Computer Work,” c. 1970, Box 28, Artwork Analysis, 1970s, Miriam Schapiro Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
14 Judy Chicago, “Feminist Art Education: Made in California,” in Politics of Study, ed. Sidsel Meineche Hansen and Tom Vandeputte (London: Occasional Table/Open Editions; Odense, Denmark: Funen Art Academy, 2015), 84–91.
15. Griffin et al., “Women and the Creative Process: A Discussion,” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 8, no. 1 (1974): 117.
6
68
SHRINE: HOMAGE TO M.L. 1963
OIL
9 REPRIEVE 1961
OIL ON CANVAS
49 X 59½ INCHES
COLLAGE
12 CANYON 1967
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS
31 X 25 INCHES
32
17
MYLAR SERIES (COMPUTER SERIES) 1971
TAPE
18 COMPUTER SERIES 1969
ACRYLIC AND SPRAY PAINT ON CANVAS
50 X 60 INCHES
19
ROSARITA’S BLOCKS 1968
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS
72 X 80 INCHES
20
FOLLOWING SPREAD
THE PALACE AT 3:00 AM OR MEANDER 1971
ACRYLIC AND SPRAY PAINT ON CANVAS
52 X 84 INCHES
ACRYLIC
b. Toronto, Ontario, 1923
d. Hampton Bays, NY, 2015
University of Iowa, Iowa City: BA, 1945, MA, 1946; MFA, 1949
2023 Miriam Shapiro: The André Emmerich Years, Paintings from 1957–76 Eric Firestone Gallery, New York, NY
2018 Surface/ Depth: The Decorative After Miriam Schapiro
The Museum of Art and Design, NY
Miriam Schapiro Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2016 Miriam Schapiro: The California Years, 1967–1975 Eric Firestone Loft, New York, NY
Miriam Schapiro: A Visionary The National Academy, New York, NY
2008 Mini Retrospective , Flomenhaft Gallery, New York, NY
2004 Anarchy and Form: Works by Miriam Schapiro Mabel Smith Douglass Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Miriam Schapiro: An Artist’s Journey Brenau University galleries, Gainesville, GA
2003 Small Works of Miriam Schapiro Daywood Gallery, AldersonBroaddus College, Philippi, WV
2002 Miriam Schapiro’s Art: A Journey University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA
Works on Paper Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV
1999 Miriam Schapiro: A Retrospective curated by Thalia
Gouma-Peterson, Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, FL
Miriam Schapiro: Reconstructing Women’s Traditions
Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA
Miriam Schapiro: Works on Paper, A Thirty-Year Retrospective Tucson Museum of art, Tucson, AZ; The Art Museum of Missoula, MN
1998 Miriam Schapiro: A Seamless Life DuPont Gallery, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA
1996 Miriam Schapiro: A Woman’s Way, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Collage, Femmages, Printed & Painted Steinbaum Krauss Gallery, New York, NY
1994 Miriam Schapiro: A Seamless Life Sawhill Gallery, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA
Collaboration Series 1994: Mother Russia Steinbaum Krauss Gallery, New York, NY
1993 Miriam Schapiro West Virginia University, College of Creative Arts, Morgantown, WV
1992 Miriam Schapiro Twentieth Anniversary Celebration, ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL
Miriam Schapiro Fullerton College Art Gallery, Fullerton, CA
1991 The Politics of the Decorative Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY
Collaboration Series: Frida Kahlo and Me Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, New York, NY
Miriam Schapiro Brevard Art Center, Melbourne, FL
1990 Miriam Schapiro Lew Allen/ Butler Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
Miriam Schapiro: Works on Paper Phyllis Rothman gallery, Fairleigh Dickenson University, Madison, NJ
1988 The Mythic Pool Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, New York, NY
1987 Ragtime Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, New York, NY
1986 Miriam Schapiro Broadway Windows New York University, New York, NY
Miriam Schapiro: A Decade , Artlink Contemporary Artspace, Ft. Wayne, IN
1985 Appalachian State University, Boone, NC
Femmages 1971–1985 Brentwood Gallery, St. Louis, MO
1984 Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL
1983 Barbara Gilman Gallery, Miami FL Kent State University, Kent, OH
1982 Miriam Schapiro, A Retrospective: 1953–1980 Visual Arts Gallery, Florida International University, Miami, FL; Loch Haven Sty Center, Miami, FL
Invitation and Presentation Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY
1981 Miriam Schapiro, A Retrospective: 1953–1980 Vassar College Gallery, Poughkeepsie, NY; Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, IN; Spencer Museum, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS; Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY
Miriam Schapiro: The Black Paintings Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY
Miriam Schapiro: Neue Bilder Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Cologne, Germany
1980 Miriam Schapiro, A Retrospective: 1953–1980 The College of Wooster Art Museum, Wooster, OH; Wright State University Art Galleries, Dayton, OH; Kalamazoo Institute of Fine Arts, Kalamazoo, MI
The Heartist Series Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY
Lerner-Heller Gallery, New York, NY
New Paintings Dart Gallery, Chicago, IL
1979 An Approach to the Decorative Lerner-Heller Gallery, New York, NY
An Approach to the Decorative Gladstone-Villani Gallery, New York, NY
Femmages Davenport Municipal Art Gallery, Davenport, IA
Handkerchief Works Douglas Drake Gallery, Kansas City, KS
New Works Marcel Liatowitsch Gallery, Basel, Switzerland
Anonymous was a Woman Center Gallery, Madison, WI
1977 Anatomy of a Kimono Reed College Art Gallery, Portland, OR
Anatomy of a Kimono / Apron and Handkerchief Series
André Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY
Collaboration Series Mitzi Landau Artspace, Los Angeles, CA
Femmages Allen Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH
Femmages Fairbanks Gallery, State University of Oregon, Corvallis, OR
Anonymous was a Woman Honors Gallery, State University of Oregon, Corvallis, OR
1976 Works on Paper A.R.C. Gallery, Chicago, IL
Works on Paper Douglas Drake Gallery, Kansas City, MI
Selected Paintings: Women Artists Series Mabel Douglas College Library, New Brunswick, NJ
André Emmerich gallery, New York, NY
1975 The Shrine, the Computer and the Dollhouse Mandeville Art Gallery, University of California, San Diego, CA
The Shrine, the Computer and the Dollhouse Mills College, Oakland, CA
Works on Paper Comsky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Works on Paper Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY
1974 Miriam Schapiro: A Cabinet for all Seasons Comsky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1973 Miriam Schapiro: New Work André Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY
1971 André Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY
1969 Recent Paintings André Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY
1968 André Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY
1966 The Evolution of a Theme: 1952–1966 Lyman Allen Museum, New London, CT
1965 Miriam Schapiro: Paintings, Collages, Prints Franklin Siden Gallery, Detroit, MI
1964 Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY
1963 New Paintings André Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY
1961 Miriam Schapiro: Paintings and Drawings André Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY
1960 André Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY
1958 Miriam Schapiro: New Work André Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY
1951 Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, IL University of Missouri, Columbia, MO
2023 Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940–70, Whitechapel Gallery, London, U.K.
Too Much is Just Right: The Legacy of Pattern and Decoration Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC
2022 Hanging / Leaning: Women Artists on Long Island, 1960s–80s Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, NY
2022 Woman Artists: Highlights from the Hunter Museum of American Art Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN
2022 WOMANHOUSE Anat Ebgi Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2021 With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972–1985 Hessel Museum of Art of Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY
2020-21 Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
2019 With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
Pattern and Decoration: Ornament as Promise Museum
Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna, Austria
Less is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA
Where Art Might Happen: The Early Years of CalArts Kestner Gessellschaft, Hanover, Germany
2018 Pattern, Decoration and Crime Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland
Pattern and Decoration: Ornament as Promise , Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany
West by Midwest: Geographies of Art and Kinship Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL
Women House: 36 Women Artists Deconstruct Domesticity National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
2017 The Everywhere Museum Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Miami, FL
2015 Womanhouse Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, NY
2008 Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution MoMA P.S.1, Queens, NY; Vancouver Art Gallery British Columbia, Canada
Burning Down the House: Building a Feminist Art Collection Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
2007 Pattern and Decoration: An Ideal Vision in American Art, 1975–1985 Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY
Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
2005 Beauty Overlooked: Pattern and Decoration Artworks from The Permanent Collection Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, FL
1998 High Art/High Jinks in Contemporary Art Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
1997 A Woman’s Way, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.
1996 25 Years of Feminism, 25 Years of Women’s Art Mary H. Dana Women Artist Series, Mason Gross School of Arts, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
1995 Division of Labor: Women’s Work in Contemporary Art The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
Skirting the Decorative Harbor Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA
1994 The Label Show: Contemporary Art & The Museum Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
1993 Establishing the Legacy The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
1992 Parallel Visions: Modern Artists and Outsider Art Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
1991 Art on Paper Weatherspoon Gallery, Greensboro, NC
Collage Unglued , North Miami Museum, Center of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL
Designing Women Rutgers Summerfest, Walters Hall Gallery, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Graphicstudio: Contemporary Art from the Collaborative Workshop at the University of South Florida, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.
Presswork: The Art of Women Printmakers National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
1990 Contemporary Women Works on Paper, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
East Hampton Avant-Garde: A Salute to the Signa Gallery Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY
Pattern & Decoration Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, FL
1989 Making their Mark, Women Artists Today: A Documentary Survey 1970–1985 Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH; The New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; The Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
1988 Extraordinarily Fashionable Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC
Herstory: Women and the U.S. Constitution Atlanta College of Art, Atlanta, GA
The Politics of Gender Queensborough Community College Gallery, The City University of New York, Queens, NY
The Women’s Caucus for Art 1988 Houston Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX
1987 Art in Fashion/Fashion in Art Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, New York, NY; Prichard University of Idaho, Moscow, ID; The Nickle Arts Museum, The University of Calgary, Alberta Canada; Boston University Art Gallery, Boston, MA; Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA; Bass Museum, Miami, FL; The Atlanta College of Art, Woodruff Arts Center, Atlanta, GA; Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, WI; Museum of Art, Munson-WilliamsProctor Institute, Utica, NY
The Artist’s Mother The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY; National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Computers and Art Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY Contemporary American Collage 1960–1985 Herter Art Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA; Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Mansfield, CT; Lehigh University gallery, Bethlehem, PA; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH; Stedman Art Gallery, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ; Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
The Eloquent Object Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; The Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The Chicago Public Library Cultural Center, Chicago, IL; The Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
1986 After Matisse, Independent Curators, Inc., Queens Museum, Flushing, NY; Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, FL; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH; Worchester Art Museum, Worchester, MA
1985 Academy-Institute Purchase Exhibition American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York, NY
Adornments Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, New York, NY; Muscarelle Museum of Art, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA; Prichard Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID; Amarillo Art Center, Amarillo, TX; The Tampa Museum, Tampa, FL; UWM Museum, Milwaukee, WI; Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH; Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC; Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL; Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, TN; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR; The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH; Lamont Gallery, Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH
The New Culture, Women Artists of the Seventies University of Akron Art gallery, Akron, OH; Truman Gallery, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN
1984 The Fabric of Ornamentalism The Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT
Fascher, Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany
Fiber Crosscurrents Michael Kohler Art Canter, Sheboygan, WI
Staged/ Stages Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, New York, NY; Kilcawley Center, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH; Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, Houston, TX; ESF Art Galleries, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL; Freedman Gallery, Albright College, Reading, PA; Brunnier Gallery Museum, Iowa State University, Ames, IA; Pensacola Museum of Art, Pensacola, FL; Joan Whitney Payson Gallery, West Brook College, Portland, ME; Lamont Gallery, Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH; University Gallery, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH; University Art Gallery, California State University, Long Beach, CA; College of Wooster, Wooster, OH
Women Part I Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, NY
1983 The Artist & The Quilt Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX; The Arts Council, Winston-Salem, NC; Jane Vorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ; Herron art Gallery/ Indianapolis Art League, Indianapolis, IN; Huntington Gallery, Huntington, WV; Columbus Art Museum, Columbus, OH; Textile Museum, Washington, D.C.; Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York, NY
Back to the U.S.A., Kunstmuseum, Lucerne, Switzerland; Rheinishes Landes Museum, Bonn, Germany; Wurtenbergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany; Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Brave New Works Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Collector’s Gallery XVIII Marion Koogler Art Museum, San Antonio, TX
The Decorative Continues Pam Adler Gallery, New York, NY
Exchanges of Sources: Expanding Powers , California State College, Stanislaus, Turlock, CA
Komposition Im Halbrund Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany; Museum Bellrive, Zurich, Switzerland
A Love Story Just Above Midtown Downtown, New York, NY Miriam Schapiro and Joyce Kozloff Barbara Gilman Gallery, Miami, FL
Ornamentalism: The New Decorativeness in Architecture and Design Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY
1982 The Americans Collage: 1950–1982 Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX
Stroke/Line/Figure Gimpel Fils, Ltd., London Sydney Biennial, Sydney, Australia
1981 Alive at the Parrish Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY
Fiber in Collusion University Art Gallery, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND; Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada
Typisch Frau, Bonner Kunstverin and Galerie Philomene
Magers, Bonn; Stadisches Museum, Regensbourg, Germany
1980 Decade Los Angeles Painting in the Seventies, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA
Fabric into Art State University of New York at Old Westbury, Old Westbury, NY
Les Nouveaux Fauves di Neuen Wilden Ludwig Museum, Aachen, Germany; Modern Art Gallerie, Vienna, Austria
Painting and Sculpture Now Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN
Pattern Painting: Decorative Art Galerie Holtman, Hanover, Germany
R.O.S.C. 1980: The Poetry of Vision University College, Dublin, Ireland
Women in Art Today, College of Wooster Art Museum, Wooster, OH
1979 The Decorative Impulse Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
Decorative Art: Recent Work Douglas College Art Gallery, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
International Contemporary Feminist Art (traveled to 8 Museums in the Netherlands)
1978 Pattern and Decoration Sewall Art Gallery, Rice University, Houston, TX
Pattering Painting Palais de Beaux Arts, Brussels, Belgium
Out of the House Whitney Museum at 55 Water At., New York, NY
Women Artists ’78 Graduate Center of the City of New York, New York, NY
1977 Artists Look at Art University of Kansas, Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS
Collage Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Pattern Paintings P.S.1 Art Center, Queens, NY
Patterning and Decoration American Foundation for the Arts, Miami, FL
1976 American Artists ‘76: A Celebration Marion Koogler McNay Institute, San Antonio, TX
Artists of East Hampton 1859–1976 Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY
Contemporary American Painting , Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA
118 Artists Landmark Gallery, New York, NY
1975 Collage and Assemblage in Southern California Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
Women Artists Here and Now, Ashawagh Hall, Springs, NY
1974 The Audacious Years 1961–1971 Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA
Quilts, Mount St. Vincent University Museum, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
1973 Female Sexuality/Female Identity Womenspace, Los Angeles, CA
1972 21 Artists: Invisible/Visible Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA
American Women: Twentieth Century Lake View Center for the Arts, Peoria, IL
Unmanly Art Suffolk Museum, Stony Brook, NY Womanhouse, Los Angeles, CA
1971 Women in the Collection Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
1969 Paul Brach and Miriam Schapiro Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA; La Jolla Museum of Art, La Jolla, CA
Boxes, Books and Things The Jewish Museum, New York, NY
New Acquisitions Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
1967 Contemporary American Painting and Sculpture 1967, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL
International Selection 1967 Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH 180 Beacon Collection: ‘67 Group Boston, MA
1965 New Prints Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
1964 Recent American Drawings The Rise Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
1963 American Prints from the Hilton at the Rockefeller Center Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Symbolist Legacy Contemporary Art Association, Houston, TX
Toward A New Abstraction The Jewish Museum, New York, NY
1962 65th Annual American Exhibition The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Museum of Modern Art Traveling Show: Abstract Watercolors and Drawings (traveling, North America and South America)
1961 64th Annual American Exhibition The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
1960 The Women: Tops in Art Dord Fitz Gallery, Amarillo, TX
1959 Whitney Annual Whitney Museum of Art, New York, NY
1958 Abstract Impressionism Arts Council Gallery, London, U.K.
The 1958 Bicentennial International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture , Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA
Tanager Gallery, New York, NY
1957 New Talent Exhibition Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
1956 Drawings, Watercolors and Small Oils Poindexter Gallery, New York, NY
1955 Seventeen Contemporary Paintings University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
Fourth Artists’ Annual Show Stable Gallery, New York, NY
New Artists of the Region Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY
1954 Third Artist’s Annual Show Stable Gallery, New York, NY
Tanager Gallery, New York, NY
1953 Second Artists’ Annual Show Stable Gallery, New York, NY
Tanager Gallery, New York, NY
1949 A New Direction in Intaglio traveled: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, Colorado Spring, CO
1947 Print Exhibition Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY
Chrysler Museum of Art, Ghent, VA
Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, IL
The Jewish Museum, New York, NY
Kalamazoo Institute of Fine Arts, Kalamazoo, MI
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Mills College, Oakland, CA
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN
Missoula Museum of Art, Missoula, MT
Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
Muscarelle Museum of Art, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Museum of Moderner Kunst, Wien, Austria
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. New York University, New York, NY
Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL
Parrish Museum, Southampton, FL
Pensacola Museum, Pensacola, FL
Peter Ludwig Collection, Aachen, Germany
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. St. Louis City Art Museum, St. Louis, MO
University Art Museum, Berkley, CA
University of California, Santa Cruz, CA
University of Iowa Art Museum, Iowa City, IA
Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Williams College Museum of Art, New York, NY
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA
Yale University, New Haven, CT
Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, NJ
SELECTED AWARDS AND HONORS
2006 The Elan Award from the Women’s Studio Center, New York
2002 CAA Lifetime Achievement Award
1995 Honorary Doctorate degree, Moore College of Art, Philadelphia
1994 Honorary Doctorate Degree, Miami University, Oxford, OH Honorary Doctorate degree and Commencement Address, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis, MN Honors Award, New York State NARAL
1993 Honorary Doctorate Degree, Lawrence University, Appelton, WI
1988 Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA
1987 Honors Award, The Women’s Caucus for Art John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
1982 Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, College of Wooster, Wooster, OH
1964 Visual Artist Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts
SELECTED WRITING BY THE ARTIST
M. Schapiro et al., The Artist & The Quilt New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
M. Schapiro and M. Meyer, “Femmage: Waste Not Want Not, An Inquiry into What Women Saved and Assembled,” Heresies 1978.
M. Schapiro and CalArts Feminist Art Program eds., Anonymous Was a Woman: A Documentation of the Women’s Art Festival: A Collection of Letters to Young Women Artists Santa Clara, CA: California Institute of the Arts, 1974.
J. Chicago and M. Schapiro, “A Feminist Art Program,” Art Journal Vol. 31, No. 1, Autumn 1971.
Thank you to all of Miriam Schapiro’s friends who have remained steadfast in championing Schapiro’s work and generously shared their memories of the artist with us. Chief among these is Judy Brodsky, executor of the Estate of Miriam Schapiro. We also thank Joyce Kozloff, Melissa Meyer, Mira Schor, and Joan Semmel. We extend our gratitude to the many curators and collectors who have been involved in sharing new perspectives in recent years on Schapiro’s work. During the gallery’s exhibition, we hosted a virtual panel discussion on Schapiro’s work between Judy Brodsky, Carrie Moyer, Komal Shah, William J. Simmons, and Lisa Wainwright as well as a panel discussion in the gallery between Elissa Auther, Joyce Kozloff, Melissa Meyer, Beau Ott, and Mira Schor. We thank all of the panelists for taking part in such lively and thoughtful conversations. At Rutgers Libraries, we thank Fernanda Perrone and Stephanie Crawford for their help with our research in the Miriam Schapiro Papers and for providing archival images for this publication. We extend a special thank you to art historian and Miriam Schapiro scholar Maddy Henkin for her brilliant essay in this volume, which expresses the continuity of Schapiro’s goals and feminist ideas throughout her long and varied career. I would like to personally thank the entire gallery staff for their tireless work in producing this exhibition catalogue. None of this would be possible without them!
Eric Firestone
Published on the occasion of the exhibition
March 22–May 13, 2023
on view at Eric Firestone Gallery 40 Great Jones Street, New York, NY
ISBN: 979-8-218-22609-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023912366
Cover: The Game detail, 1960, see pl. 1
Frontispiece: Schapiro at Tanager Gallery, 1953. Courtesy of Miriam Schapiro Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries. © 2023 Estate of Rudy Burckhardt / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Publication copyright © 2023 Eric Firestone Press
Essay copyright © 2023 Maddy Henkin
All artwork © 2023 Estate of Miriam Schapiro / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Reproduction of contents prohibited
All rights reserved
Published by
Eric Firestone Press
4 Newtown Lane East Hampton, NY 11937
Eric Firestone Gallery
40 Great Jones Street New York, NY 10012 646-998-3727
4 Newtown Lane East Hampton, NY 11937 631-604-2386
ericfirestonegallery.com
Principal: Eric Firestone
Director: Jennifer Samet
Managing Director: Kara Winters
Associate Director: Maddy Henkin
Principal Photography: Roman Dean
Copyeditor: Natalie Haddad
Design: Russell Hassell, New York
Printing: Puritan Capital, New Hampshire