Description:
The work of Joel Shapiro (b. 1941), an American artist well known for his large-scale angular and figurative sculptures, is the subject of Joel Shapiro: Sculpture and Drawings, by Hendel Teicher. This catalog of works from 1968 to 1997 is a great opportunity to see Shapiro's art progress and his thought process evolve over three decades. Shapiro spent time in India in the Peace Corps in the late 1960s, and the book traces the influence of that experience on his work, beginning with repetitive clay pieces from 1972. Shapiro has enjoyed an extremely productive career, and Teicher organizes the work into four major categories: memory, structures, figures, and shift of scale. Within these categories are smaller themes, including metaphors, houses, extensions, choreography, trees, etc. The categorizing is a helpful way to view the work because Shapiro often returns to motifs years later. His first small and poetic house sculpture from 1973 appears again in 1993 in the major outdoor piece he created for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Besides offering wonderful images of Shapiro's work, including photos of temporal pieces that no longer exist, the book offers a very well conceived and articulated way to understand the artist's oeuvre. With 295 images, including 90 full-color plates. --Jennifer Cohen
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