From Library Journal
Now in her seventies, Schapiro is one of the historic foremothers of the American feminist art movement. Yet, apart from Paula Bradley's dissertation, Miriam Schapiro (1983), this is the first work on the artist. The book, accompanying a Schapiro retrospective traveling around the country through 2001, includes 125 illustrations, 75 in full color. Research is based on the artist's notebooks and interviews by Gouma-Peterson, a longtime friend and art critic. Taking a psychoanalytic stance, Schapiro painted beautifully in Abstract Expressionism, then moved to several types of symbolic, geometric, computer-generated entities. The most characteristic works are her unique, highly patterned multimedia collage paintings of fabric and acrylic. From the 1980s on, Shapiro displays even more lushly conceived compositions, both figurative and postmodern. Very highly recommended for graduates and undergraduates, this belongs in all academic and larger public library collections.AMary Hamel-Schwulst, Towson Univ., MD
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Publisher comments
A pioneering force in the feminist art movement of the 1970s, Miriam Schapiro (b. 1923) is an internationally renowned artist. In this, the only comprehensive work on Schapiro, feminist art historian Thalia Gouma-Peterson traces Schapiro's career from her early gestural canvases to her legendary collaborations with other women artists to her femmages (feminist-oriented collages) to her tributes to female artists of the past. Best known for her large heart- and fan-shaped canvases layered with fabric and paint, Schapiro helped launch the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s and '80s and developed a richly decorative style that has influenced a generation of younger artists. Noted scholar Linda Nochlin contributes an insightful foreword, while Gouma-Peterson draws from Schapiro's writings to convey the artist's reflections on art, art history, and the feminist movement. 125 illustrations, 75 in full color, 9 x 11" Thalia Gouma-Peterson is professor of art history and museum director at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio. She has curated numerous exhibitions and written for many art magazines. She is co-author of Abrams' Breaking the Rules: Audrey Flack: A Retrospective 1950-1990. Gouma-Peterson lives in Oberlin, Ohio. Linda Nochlin is the Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art at the Insti tute of Fine Arts, New York University, and a pioneering scholar of feminist art history. She has written a number of books and is a contributor to Abrams' The Power of Feminist Art. Exhibition Schedule Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, Florida Dec. 11, 1999-Mar. 5, 2000 Miami University Art Museum, Oxford, Ohio Mar. 17-June 2, 2000
