Meyer Schapiro
Art Historian and Critic
Born: September 23, 1904 - Siauliai, Lithuania
Died: March 3, 1996 - New York, NY, USA
"Style is, above all, a system of forms with a quality and meaningful expression through which the personality of the artist and the overall outlook of a group are visible. It is also a vehicle of expression within the group, communicating and fixing certain values of religious, social, and moral life through the emotional suggestiveness of forms."
Summary of Meyer Schapiro
Meyer Schapiro was a critic, teacher, and art historian who spent most of his life in New York City after emigrating from Lithuania as a child. In the 1940s and '50s, Schapiro delivered many lectures that were attended regularly by many of the well-known modern artists of the time. Schapiro was a huge proponent of modern art as well as a close friend and adviser to many artists, such as Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell, who benefited from Schapiro's vast knowledge of art history and theories on aesthetics and perspective. More so than many of his critical contemporaries, Schapiro was a learned expert on matters of art history and theory, which made his opinions all the more valuable to the many artists he lectured to and socialized with.
Key Ideas
Biography
Childhood
The descendent of Talmudic scholars, he was born Meir Schapiro in Lithuania to Nathan Menachem Schapiro and Fanny Adelman Schapiro. Nathan had abandoned the Orthodox Jewish faith and was influenced by an Eastern European enlightenment movement that favored Western secular learning.
Analysis | |
 Artwork Images | Portrait of Chocquet (1875)Artist: Paul Cézanne Artwork description & Analysis: In an excerpt from Schapiro's book on Paul Cézanne, he writes in reference to Cézanne's Portrait of Chocquet: "And as in [Cézanne's] landscapes, we follow the action of the brush everywhere, spirited and frank in creating a thick fleshy paste of pigment, rich in flicker, direction, and tone." Oil on canvas - Lord Victor Rothschild collection, Cambridge, England |
 Artwork Images | A Pair of Shoes (1885)Artist: Vincent Van Gogh Artwork description & Analysis: There is an interesting story concerning Schapiro and this peculiar still life by Vincent van Gogh. In a heated exchange with the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, with whom Schapiro sharply disagreed on many topics concerning art, they discussed the origins of van Gogh's A Pair of Shoes. Heidegger believed that the boots once belonged to a peasant, thus, the portrait was meant to reflect the state of peasant life. Schapiro, on the other hand, saw something of the artist himself in this work, and argued that "the idea of the shoe as a symbol of [van Gogh's] life-long practice of walking, and an ideal of life as a pilgrimage." Schapiro was able to find deeper meaning, a reflection of the artist's life in the portrait. Furthermore, since van Gogh painted many still lifes of shoes, it's still up for debate as to which portrait the two men were discussing. Oil on canvas - Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam |
 Artwork Images | Evocation (The Burial of Casagemas) (1901)Artist: Pablo Picasso Artwork description & Analysis: In his famous lecture, 'The Unity of Picasso's Art,' Schapiro wrote: "Picasso enters the scene of European painting with an astonishing diversity of practice." According to Schapiro, Picasso had no singular style, but a mastery of nearly every style. In Evocation (one of several paintings devoted to his recently deceased friend Carles Casagemas), the artist employs some elements of European religious art and combines them with provocative imagery (nudes and prostitutes, for example). Schapiro pointed out that it contains a "unity" and "disunity" unfolding at once and is symptomatic of the artist's work as a whole, "for one cannot help but notice also in Picasso's work that at the very same moment he is able to paint and to draw in several different styles, he is not bound to a particular way of working at a moment." Oil on canvas - Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris |
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Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
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First published on 01 Oct 2012. Updated and modified regularly. 
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