Perhaps one of the most parodied and iconic American images is that of Grant Wood’s American Gothic. The work was acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago after it was unveiled there to the public in 1930 to much scrutiny. Ever since, the painting has captured a certain resonance with the American public, but its […]
Support the arts
Looking at this postcard sent by John Lennon and Yoko Ono to Meyer Schapiro, I can’t help but think of supporting the arts. In processing his correspondence, a portrait of Schapiro surfaces as a man who made every attempt to aid academics, artists, writers, and cultural workers. For example, during the ensuing years of World […]
Save the Cooper Union Museum : a case study in deaccesioning
Two New York state bills are causing quite the controversy in the museum, library, and archival world. The two bills, AO6959 and SO4584, attempt to regulate the practice of removing materials from a collection, otherwise known as deaccesioning, for monetary gain. The Association of American Museum’s “Code of Ethics for Museums” includes language that allows […]
#ObscureArtHistorian
To bridge this blog with the project’s microblog on Twitter (@SchapiroArchive), I have started a new follow with the hashtag #ObscureArtHistorian. This follow is dedicated to those art historians that are not as famously known as others. The follow is also an homage to one of the most useful on-line art historical reference resources, The […]
Philip Guston
Looking back at the art history of the 20th century, one tends to schematize artists within certain boundaries. Abstract Expressionists here, Pop artists there, and Minimalism yonder. But certain artists defy these categories. Retrospectively looking back at an artist’s corpus, categorizations can sometimes be evasive and lack definition. Such is the case with the artist […]
Postcard from the edge
Without a doubt, Salvador Dalí’s visual landscapes are as wild as they are hypnotic. The image on this postcard sent by Dalí to Meyer Schapiro is of Cadaqués, a fishing village in Catalonia, Spain that Dalí visited regularly throughout his life. Not unlike the artist’s own work, the postcard image has a distilled quality reminiscent […]
Codename: Agent Japonica & Ventriloquist
One of the joys of working in an archive is deciphering clues and ascertaining that certain identities are really who they are. For example, Who is Agent Japonica & Ventriloquist and is there a connection with Meyer Schapiro? As many of Schapiro’s friends, colleagues, and scholars know, he was an adamant supporter of the resistance […]
Cézanne and Beyond
The well reviewed exhibition Cézanne and Beyond at the Philadelphia Museum of Art closes this weekend. Throughout his life, Meyer Schapiro would write about Cézanne as a man who exemplified the artistic struggle–a struggle that defined the inner pathos of man and his quest to represent that personal journey itself. In a 1959 essay “Cézanne,” […]
Tweezers and shovels : on the use of MPLP
Working on an archival project such as the Meyer Schapiro Papers definitely yields fascinating finds. In the foreword to the publication Meyer Schapiro Abroad, art historian Thomas Crow notes: The published writings of Meyer Schapiro, as a contribution to the history of art and human cultural endeavor, would suffice for far more than one distinguished […]
Allen Ginsberg and Howl
Allen Ginsberg, poet, activist, and spiritual seeker, attended Columbia alongside Jack Kerouac, who met each other through mutual friend Lucien Carr. Kerouac, at that point, had left Columbia earlier. William Burroughs came into the fray as well, joining the group of friends in New York City. Columbia celebrates Ginsberg with the annual Columbia HOWL, a […]