SCHAPIRO, MEYER

SCHAPIRO, MEYER (1904–1996), U.S. historian of art. Schapiro was born in Siauliai, Lithuania, but immigrated to the United States as a child of three. He was first introduced to art history at an evening class at the Hebrew Settlement House in Brownsville, taught by John Sloan. He graduated from Columbia University in 1924 with honors in art history and philosophy, receiving his doctorate in 1929. Schapiro taught in the department of art, history, and archaeology at Columbia from 1928 onwards, teaching at that institution as a University Professor from 1965 to 1975, when he was appointed professor emeritus. He was lecturer of fine arts at New York University from 1932 to 1936, the New School for Social Research from 1936 to 1952, London University from 1947 to 1957, the Hebrew University in 1961, Norton Professor of Fine Arts at Harvard from 1966 to 1967, Oxford University in 1968, and at the College of France in 1974. Schapiro was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society, and was elected to the American Institute of Arts and Letters. Columbia University awarded him the Alexander Hamilton Medal for distinguished service in 1975. A professorship in Modern Art and Theory was created at Columbia in his name. He is acknowledged as one of the most distinguished American historians of art. A rigorous observer and theorist, he addressed the relationship among society, artist, and artwork, arguing that social and institutional forces mediated the actions of even the modern artist. In this way, his viewpoint differed from that of Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, two other Jewish intellectuals who contributed to the shape of modern art history in New York during this period. Schapiro was a masterful and gifted art historian of medieval art, Romanesque sculpture, and 19th and 20th century art, especially that of Cezanne, Courbet, Mondrian, and van Gogh. His friends and former students included Irving Howe, Willem de Kooning, Jacques Lipchitz, Robert Motherwell, and Barnett Newman. He also worked with Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse when they moved the Frankfurt School from Germany to New York. The publisher George Baziller has published four volumes of Schapiro's work, beginning in 1977 with Selected Papers. Romanesque Art; the last volume Theory and Philosophy of Art was printed in 1994. He published his celebrated works Van Gogh in 1950, Cezanne in 1952, and Words and Pictures in 1976. He also contributed articles to The Nation and Partisan Review. Schapiro's research and writing continues to be instrumental to contemporary art historians, including Norman Bryson, T.J. Clark, and Linda Nochlin. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: D. Carrier, "Worldview in Painting – Art and Society. Book Review," in: Art Bulletin, 82 (June 2000); T. Crow, "Village   Voice," in: Artforum International, 34 (June 1996); M. Schapiro, "The Nature of Abstract Art," in: Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries. Selected Papers (1968). (Nancy Buchwald (2nd ed.)