It’s not 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 many of her generation, Schapiro felt guilty when her “outside work” in the studio interfered with her “inside work” at home. She wrote in her diary: “How good it would be to have some encouragement now.”
Schapiro embarked on her career in the 1950s, an era when women were expected to prioritize marriage over professional aspirations. Initially, she embraced Abstract Expressionism, a style defined by gestural brushwork and a sense of spontaneity.
Dancing on the surface
In Fêtes Champêtres, thinned oil paint soaks into raw canvas, creating a patchwork of colors. Fleshy brushstrokes near the center of the picture evoke a human figure nestled within a wild, flourishing garden. Schapiro defined this work as an “inscape”—an imaginary landscape of the mind.
By contrast, Fanfare draws on childhood dance lessons to transform the surface of the canvas into a stage filled with frenetic brushstrokes:
Two figures engage in an intense “pas de deux.” A broad and expansive dancer painted primarily in reds and oranges moves toward a quieter, more restrained figure painted primarily in light blues and wearing a blue hat.
Art historian Thalia Gouma-Peterson, “Miriam Schapiro,” 1999
Frustration beneath the surface
As her career advanced, Schapiro formed close relationships with Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, and other prominent women in the Abstract Expressionist movement.
However, unlike Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Norman Lewis, these women didn’t gather at the legendary Cedar Tavern to swap stories of ruthless ambition. The social norms of the 1950s discouraged women from discussing their professional lives so openly.
So Schapiro turned to visual communication instead. In the 1960s, she produced a series of feminist oil paintings defined by recurring motifs: a red rectangle, a vertical tower, and various symbols for the female body.
In The House, Schapiro represents herself as an egg trying to enter a gabled home. Or is she being expelled by it? In any case, that egg cannot be contained within those walls without cracking.
In Treasury, biomorphic blue-and-white brushstrokes try to slip in through a keyhole. Or are they struggling to get out?
In my art, I could no longer live in the jungle. I wanted desperately to make my images clearer. I began by changing an S-curve into a straight line. Soon the straight line became a box. Then the box became a house. Finally, I built the house out of everything I was unsure of—and everything I was certain about.
Miriam Schapiro, in her journal notes, 1966
She remembers everything
The political activism of the 1970s radically transformed Schapiro’s art. Following a brief stint teaching at the California Institute of the Arts, she returned to the studio to merge paint with pieces of fabric specifically selected to honor women’s intimate histories.
Together with artist Melissa Meyer, she invented femmage—a style of collage that challenges male dominance in art history. For centuries, women downplayed gender in their work in order to be taken seriously.
In Schapiro’s first femmage, an abstract self-portrait titled Curtains, two strands of decorative trim pull apart. Symbolically, the artist is about to reveal a side of herself that male critics will dismiss as trivial—and she knows it.
No sooner had I finished the painting than I panicked. I was frightened of having done something wrong….even though no man was standing over me….no man whose critical judgements were always correct. I was the one being critical of the work. That man lived within me.
Miriam Schapiro, in her journal notes, 1974
Despite her initial anxiety, Schapiro was determined to challenge the marginalization of women in art. Most of her work after 1973 favors a lush, feminine aesthetic. (Explore Schapiro’s Dollhouse)
A vision born of many hands
While speaking at art galleries and universities, Schapiro invited women to contribute meaningful pieces of fabric that she could transform into an act of shared imagination.
One such work, Personal Appearance #3, is a femmage of great richness and visual complexity. It features a shrine-like figure with a head resembling a basket of flowers, symbolically giving birth to a cascade of fabric and embroidery.
Fabric arms reach out in all directions, a clear allusion to the shared experiences of women—their memories, fantasies, freedoms, constraints, sorrows, and joys.
The work can also be read as a route of passage between the artist and the women who inspire her work.
Art historian Thalia GHouma-Peterson, “Miriam Schapiro” 1999
In Delacroix and Me, Schapiro confronts the 19th-century master Eugène Delacroix, known for his sumptuous—and often fetishized— depictions of women in harems. In her femmage, a powerful figure in a black kimono rises up to obstruct Delacroix’s male gaze, thus visually asserting her own artistic identity.
“I was trained to be an artist by men,” she noted. “But I learned how to express myself from women.”
If it weren’t for him
In her later years, Schapiro drew inspiration from childhood memories. Her femmage Father and Daughter honors her father’s influence on her career. It shows Theodore Schapiro, an industrial designer, offering his daughter a flower—a symbol of the gift of art.
The two figures dance together, dressed in masquerade. Schapiro portrays her father as a Russian immigrant to Canada and herself as a street-smart kid.
Male critics occasionally dismiss Schapiro’s work as sentimental, a label she embraces. “Sentimentality is a powerful idea,” she said. “And it helps women artists move away from traditional male forms.”
The larger picture is that we still live in a patriarchal society. The basic issues have not changed. So who is kidding whom about what is going on?
I have made peace with my life. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But early on I said to myself, “Miriam, you must make your art for women, and when you make art for women, they will get it.“
Miriam Schapiro, 1991
“Women will get it”
Schapiro’s pictures are about women making their way in a world that systematically undervalues their work. Also, they pull back the curtain on the marginalization of women in art history—an academic field with some serious gatekeeping problems.
As feminist art historian Linda Nochlin noted, Schapiro’s impact went beyond mere protest: “She made a place for women in her art. And she made it in a way that is modern and splendidly seductive in its sensuous pictorial fabric.”
How much do we owe trailblazers like Miriam Schapiro, Judith Leyster, Berthe Morisot, and Alexandra Exter? Their legacy carries a weight far greater than these 1,200 words can fully express.
