Miriam Schapiro

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful book on a soulful and inventive artist
Review: Miriam Schapiro, now in her seventies, has been making art since childhood. She grew up in New York City, the daughter of an artist father, a powerful intellectual who became her mentor, and a mother who was a dreamer, a bookworm, and a fabulous housekeeper. (Years later, the home arts reappear in some of Schapiro's ground-breaking feminist installations.) Striving to be an artist in a critically harsh and often socially difficult male-dominated art world (anecdotes abound), Schapiro created paintings, lithographs, and paper, paint, and fabric collages, and later, original and amazing installations and collaborative works. She was a teacher, too, and provided inspiration and community-building skills to countless students and women artists. Her awareness of women's lives informed much of her later work, and her observations are insightful and powerful. This book is generously illustrated, and provides a detailed biography as well as a picture of the various art scenes of this country, midcentury and beyond. Schapiro's recollections and journal entries, along with the author's careful and extensive research, form the source material. First-rate book on a terrific artist.