Miriam schapiro self portrait
•
The Shy Museumgoer
It’s never easy for a woman artist (or any woman for that matter) to negotiate American cultural expectations. Here’s how Canadian-American artist Miriam Schapiro described her feelings about it:
I’m always in such conflict about my nurturance and selfishness— about spending time alone in the studio—that a tension has developed inside me that I believe is characteristic of my status in a society that really doesn’t recognize the cultural identity “woman artist.”
Miriam Schapiro, 1991
Like so many women of her generation, Schapiro felt guilty when her “outside work” in the studio interfered with her “insidework” at home. She wrote in her diary: “How good it would be to have some encouragement now.”
Schapiro began her career in the 1950s, a postwar decade when women were expected to prioritize marriage over their professional aspirations. Initially, she embraced the Abstra
•
Miriam Schapiro
Canadian artist (1923–2015)
Not to be confused with Miriam Shapira-Luria.
Miriam Schapiro | |
|---|---|
Front page of the exhibition catalog for Womanhouse, photograph by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville | |
| Born | November 15, 1923 Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Died | June 20, 2015(2015-06-20) (aged 91) Hampton Bays, New York, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | BA, University of Iowa (1945), MA, University of Iowa (1946), MFA, University of Iowa (1949) |
| Known for | Painter, Printmaker, Collagist, Femmage artist |
| Movement | Abstract Expressionism, Feminist art, Pattern and Decoration |
| Spouse | Paul Brach |
| Awards | College Art Association Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement (2002) |
Miriam Schapiro (also known as Mimi) (November 15, 1923 – June 20, 2015) was a Canadian-born artist based in the United States. She was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and a pioneer of feminist art. She was also considered a leader of the
•
Miriam Schapiro
Photo artighet of the artist
Miriam Schapiro
1923 to 2015
Her defining breakthrough came in 1972 when she, Judy Chicago, and 21 of their students from the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Arts created the installation Womanhouse.
Contained in an abandoned mansion, Womanhouse used icons of domestic work to explore the processes and history of gender construction, linking women’s cultural heritage with progressive feminist expression.
In subsequent years, Schapiro developed this link into a visual language that sought to recover and elevate the work of women artisans of the past, employing decorative conventions funnen in quilting, embroidery, and appliqué. To describe her artworks, as well as the activities they reference, she used the begrepp “femmage,” a word she invented to suggest a continuity between high art collage and works created by anonymous women.
Since the 1990s, Schapiro’s works incorporated figurative elements; the femi