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Meyer Schapiro (23 September 1904 – 3 March 1996) was a Lithuanian-born American art historian who developed new art historical methodologies that incorporated an interdisciplinary approach to the study of works. An expert on early Christian art, Medieval art and modern art, he explored periods and movements with an eye toward their works' social, political and material constructions.
Credited with fundamentally changing the course of the art historical discipline, Schapiro's scholarly approach was dynamic and it engaged other scholars, philosophers and artists. An active professor, lecturer, student, writer and humanist, he maintained a long professional association with Columbia University in New York.
In 1906, his father came to New York City and found a job as a Hebrew teacher at the Yitzcak Elchanan Yeshiva on the Lower East Side. Once secure, he sent for his family, who emigrated in 1907. The son's first name changed from "Meir" to "Meyer". He grew up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, where he was first exposed to art in evening classes taught by John Sloan at the Hebrew Educational Society.
He attended Public School 84 and then Boys High School in Brooklyn. He attended lectures on anthropology and economics at the Young People's Socialist League. During summers, he worked as a Western Union delivery boy, a warehouse packer, an electrical-supply assembler and an adjustment clerk at Macy's.
During his undergraduate days, he became known for his "Schapiric victory", by allegedly reducing an instructor to tears by means of dialectic logic. In 1924, he received his bachelor's degree with honors in art history and philosophy. Princeton University denied him admission for his doctorate, so he continued at Columbia and earned his doctoral degree in art history in 1929. His professors at that time included Ernest DeWald. His dissertation, five years in the making, examined the cloister and portal of Moissac Abbey, built about A.D. 1100:
Dr. Schapiro's research went far beyond the implications of Moissac itself. Medieval church history, liturgy, theology, social history, illuminated manuscripts, folklore, epigraphy, the analysis of ornament and national characteristics (real or imagined) all were pressed into service and synthesized. As a result, what had been thought of as antiquarian artifacts were seen to have a completely different character. "A new sphere of artistic creation," Dr. Schapiro called it, "without religious content and imbued with values of spontaneity, individual fantasy, delight in color and movement, and the expression of feelings that anticipate modern art. This new art, on the margins of religious work, was accompanied by a conscious taste of the spectators for the beauty of workmanship, materials and artistic devices, apart from religious meanings."
(In 1975, he received his third degree from Columbia, an honorary doctor of letters.)
He lectured at New York University (1932-1936), the New School for Social Research (1936-1952), Harvard University as the Charles Norton Lecturer (1966-1967) and Oxford University as Slade Professor of Art (1968). He was a visiting lecturer at the College de France in Paris in May 1974.
Schapiro was a proponent of modern art, on which he published essays alongside books on Van Gogh and Cézanne. He was a founder of Dissent, along with Irving Howe and Michael Harrington. From 1966–1967 Schapiro was the Norton professor at Harvard University.
Schapiro's discourse on artistic is often considered his greatest contribution to the study of art history. He said style refers to the formal qualities and visual characteristics of a piece of art, and demonstrated it could be used as an identifier of a particular Art periods and as a diagnostic tool. Style is indicative of the artist and the culture at large. It reflects the economic and social circumstances in which an artist works and breathes and reveals underlying cultural assumptions and normative values.
In 1931, Schapiro married pediatrician Lillian Milgram. They had two children, Miriam Schapiro Grosof and Ernest Schapiro.
He died in 1996 in New York at the age of 91 in the Greenwich Village house where he had lived since 1933.
In the 1950s, Schapiro urged Willem de Kooning to finish painting Woman I (1950-1952).
Schapiro's students include:
In 1973, Schapiro received an award by the Art Dealers Association of America.
In 1974, for Schapiro's 70th birthday, a dozen leading artists made original lithographs, etchings and silk-screens, sold in an edition of 100, whose proceeds endowed the Meyer Schapiro Professorship of Art History in art history and archeology at Columbia. The contributors were: Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Liberman, Stanley William Hayter, Roy Lichtenstein, André Masson, Robert Motherwell, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Saul Steinberg, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol.
The artworks were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In 1975, Schapiro received the Alexander Hamilton Medal for distinguished service and accomplishment by the alumni of Columbia University. The same year, he received an honorary doctor of letters degree from the university.
In 1976, he was elected a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
In 1987, he was named a MacArthur Foundation fellow.
In 1995, his brother Morris donated $1 million to establish the Meyer Schapiro Professorship of Modern Art and Theory.
In 1995, Schapiro received a special award for lifetime achievement from the College Art Association at its 83rd annual conference in San Antonio, Texas. He had been a member since 1926 and was cited for seven decades of scholarship and teaching in the field of art history: "Meyer Schapiro, we honor you for 70 years of unique scholarship and perception, for showing us the way in which art history enhances our understanding of human accomplishment."
Impact
Artists
In the 1940s, when the Museum of Modern Art looked at purchasing Jackson Pollock The She-Wolf (1943), Schapiro, as an acquisitions committee member, supported its acquisition.
Marxist art history
Schapiro was, at points in his career, criticized for his approach to style because of its politically radical connotations. He wrote scholarly articles for a variety of socialist publications and endeavored to apply a novel Marxism method to the study of art history. In his most famous essay on Medieval Spanish art, "From Mozarabic to Romanesque in Silos", Schapiro demonstrated how the concurrent existence of two historical styles in one monastery was indicative of economic upheaval and class conflict.
Portraits
Alice Neel painted his portrait in 1947
and 1983.
(Schapiro portrayed himself many times, including this young image.
)
Awards
Schapiro was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Philosophical Society.
Bibliography
During the 1930s, Schapiro contributed to leftist publications including The Marxist Quarterly, The New Masses, The Partisan Review and The Nation.
Books
Articles
Schapiro wrote some articles under assumed names.
Columbia classmates include:
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