Joel Shapiro: Sculpture and Drawings

Shapiro, Joel and Hendel Teicher, Michael Brenson

ISBN 10: 0810941783 / ISBN 13: 9780810941786

Published by Harry N Abrams, 1998

About this Item

Hardcover with dustjacket, 226 pages, very good condition, light rubbing to dj; no internal marks. Foreign shipping may be extra.

Seller Inventory # JoShHa35

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Joel Shapiro: Sculpture and Drawings
• Publisher: Harry N Abrams
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810941783
• ISBN 13: 9780810941786
• Binding: Hardcover
• Seller catalogs:
  • Art Since 1945

About this title

Synopsis

Through nearly 300 illustrations of his sculpture and drawings, this volume traces Joel Shapiro's development from the late-1960s. Coming of age with the Post-minimalist generation of the 1970s, and first known for small sculptures of simple house shapes and other tiny structures installed in isolation in open, uninterrupted spaces on gallery floors, by the 1980s he had embraced figurative sculpture, and has since embarked on large-scale outdoor commissions. The book's examination of Shapiro's work includes an introductory essay on his place within the history of 20th-century sculpture, and is accompanied by documentation on his life and coverage of his exhibitions and commissions, public collections of his work, and critical literature.

Review

The work of Joel Shapiro, an American artist well known for his large-scale angular/figurative sculptures is the subject of Joel Shapiro, Sculpture and Drawings by Hendel Teicher. This catalogue of works from 1968-1997 is a great opportunity to see Shapiro progress and his thought process evolve over three decades. Shapiro spent time in India in the Peace Corps in the late 1960s and the book traces the influence of that experience on his work, beginning with repetitive clay pieces from 1972. Shapiro has enjoyed an extremely productive career and Teicher organises the work into four major categories: memory, structures, figures and shift of scale. Within these categories are smaller themes--for example, metaphors, houses, extensions, choreography and trees.

The categorising is a helpful way to view the work because Shapiro often returns to motifs years later. His first small and poetic house sculpture from 1973 appears again in 1993 in the major outdoor piece he created for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. Besides offering wonderful images of Shapiro's work, including photos of temporal pieces that no longer exist, the book offers a very well conceived and articulated way to understand Shapiro's body of work. 295 images including 90 full colour plates. --Jennifer Cohen