Miriam
Schapiro: A Retrospective
Kristen Frederickson
Contemporary Art
147 Reade Street, New York
212-566-7787
February 13 - March
13, 2004
By SANDRA
SIDER
Miriam Schapiro Pleasure Dome 2003
fabric
and acrylic, 48 x 96 inches
images courtesy Kristen Frederickson Contemporary Art, New York
"Miriam Schapiro: A
Retrospective" (February 13 - March 13) at Kristen Frederickson
was exhibited concurrently with a much larger retrospective by the 80-year-old
artist at the Simmons Visual Arts Center, at Brenau University, Gainesville,
Georgia. The full-color catalogue offered at KFCA includes pieces in
both shows. The New York collection boasted stellar works, from 1970s
femmage pieces incorporating vintage textiles dominating the surface
to works on paper and her resplendent 8-feet-wide fan entitled "Pleasure
Dome," (2003). Unlike earlier fan pieces from the late 1970s with
hard edges and a narrow band bordering the curve, often more pattern
than decoration, "Pleasure Dome" exults in bursts of painted
and fabric flowers that overlap and even obliterate the hard edges of
the fan's ribs. As part of Schapiro's new series "Geometry and
Flowers," her new fan piece, with its pink roses inscribed between
a narrow half-circle of green rickrack and the painted edges of purple
lacy fabric at the center, shouts "Yes! Decoration!"
"Asian Rendezvous,"
(2003), another in the "Geometry and Flowers" series, is a
50- by 60-inch rectangle with a bright yellow ground and faint wisps
of orange paint. Schapiro has femmaged fabric and paint to create a
whirling dynamo of small costumed figures, dragons, clouds, flowers,
and watery patterns. "Asian Rendezvous," to my eye, seems
to be Schapiro's transitional work in an exciting new phase of her career.
The decoration is defined and controlled by a thin multicolored circle
marked near the edge of the work, a circle that vaguely recalls the
"O" of her gigantic orange hard-edged OX of 1967. This fine
line emphasizes the dramatic surface, creating just enough tension to
bring the piece to life.
Miriam Schapiro
Asian Rendezvous 2003
fabric and acrylic collage, 60 x 50 inches
"Diva," (1999)
is a 20-feet-wide triptych extravaganza that fills an entire wall at
KFCA. With its exuberant African-American singer, dancer, and trumpet
player beneath a proscenium arch flanked by zigzags, serpentine columns,
and two large African motifs, the monumental scale alone is mesmerizing.
Approaching closer to the "splendidly seductive" surface (the
phrase is Linda Nochlin's, from the introduction of the 1999 monograph
on the artist), the viewer is challenged by Schapiro's jazzy virtuosity.
The painting is so unified that it is impossible to determine which
was laid down first in the columns, the thin paisley fabric or the alternating
bands of scarlet and pale mauve. Definitely laid onto the paint are
fabrics for the brightly patterned trousers of dancer and musician,
the metallic fabric for the diva's cape, fishnet stockings on her legs,
and hundreds of pearly beads for the volutes on her shoes.
Miriam Schapiro
Diva 1999
fabric and acrylic, 240 x 92 inches (triptych)
With works in nearly two
dozen museums in the United States alone, Miriam Schapiro has become
one of the grandes dames of American art. The influence of Schapiro
and her Pattern and Decoration cohorts from the 1970s did not really
fade (as one reads in certain art history text books), but rather entered
the mainstream as a subversive, subterranean current. Christopher Miles
recently described this phenomenon: "Pattern and Decoration might
then be seen not as the exception or counter to dominant high modernism,
but as the expression of an enduring decorative and appropriative impulse,
and an essential if underacknowledged impetus behind the '80s resurgence
of painting and the pluralist freedom that has defined art since"
("Art in America" February 2004, p. 81). Today, the art world
seems to be experiencing a Pattern and Decoration revival, with younger
artists such as Tom Fruin creating decorative stitched surfaces with
patently indecorous objects and images. The Art Quilt movement, which
subconsciously took up the P and D torch in the 1980s, has erupted out
of the experimental '90s with unorthodox materials and painterly patterning.
2004 has opened with Pattern and Decoration exhibitions on both coasts.
The recent LAPD and NYPD shows curated by Michael Duncan in Santa Monica
included Schapiro's 1972 femmage piece Curtains, with its witty nod
to Minimalism. These two exhibitions featured founding artists of P
and D such as Kim MacConnel, Joyce Kozloff, and Robert Kushner, along
with recent works by Carl Fudge and Tina Girouard.
