Meyer Schapiro

Meyer Schapiro ( born September 23, 1904 in Siauliai, Lithuania; † 3 March 1996 in New York City ) was an American art historian Lithuanian- Jewish descent.

Childhood and youth

Meyer Schapiro was born as the second son of Jewish parents in Lithuania. His parents were descendants Talmud scholar. Due to the rising anti-Semitism in Russia, one of the Lithuania at this time, his father Nathan Menachem Schapiro to emigrate to the United States decided in 1906. The father's plan was first to find work to make up later with the money saved the family. The father worked after his arrival in New York's Lower East Side as a Hebrew teacher. Even after a year of Nathan Menachem Schapiro had enough money to send it to his family. This followed him in 1907 in the United States. Together with his mother " Fanny Adelman Schapiro " and his older brother, Morris Schapiro Meyer came, then 3 years old, Ellis Iceland on. There the formalities relating to the entry into the U.S. were clarified. On Ellis Iceland his original name " Meir " was ( so the actual first name Schapiro ) changed to Meyer. He and his family moved to Brownsville, a city district of Brooklyn. His father worked at the time as a successful cord and paper merchants.

School time

Meyer Schapiro went to school in Brooklyn. First on the " Public School 84", then later to the Boys High School. On the Boys High School, which he left in 1920 at the age of 16 years with successful completion, he got consistently good grades in Latin and mathematics, for which he is especially interested. He participated in his spare time to various lectures of the Young People's Socialist League on anthropology and economics. During his school years Schapiro was also encouraged by his parents to try many different things. His passions included the photography, and the development of images, both of which he learned in a class by John French Sloan.

Study

He studied at Columbia University in New York, from 1928 he was an assistant professor in 1952, where he received a full professorship. Schapiro's early focus was on modern art, among other things, he published books about Pablo Picasso and Paul Cézanne. He wrote in 1939 two basic essays on Romanesque sculpture and medieval Hispano- Arab art.

Meyer Schapiro showed in his works that the artistic style can not only be used to identify periods of art, but also as a concrete means of investigation. According to Schapiro, the style of a work of art is not only based on formal and visual qualities, but also sheds light on social and economic conditions under which the work was created. A work of art thus also reveals cultural ideas and normative values ​​of a society. Furthermore, are the kind of description of works of art also shed light on our own time. Write From the way historians of art, to draw conclusions arise on their own cultural context.

Throughout his career, were accused of his Marxist views, not just the art scientific revolutionary analysis of the stylistic change in sociological terms, but his mind. The New York art critic Barbara Rose, a student Schapiro, admired his political straightness Schapiro was one of the very few have been, are not turned away from socialism as you had to do it in the fifties. She calls him a lifelong Marxist ( without fanaticism )

Honors

Trivia

On his 70th birthday in 1974 donated 12 graphics artist to fund his professorship; this carries in his honor his name. These 12 artists were: Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Liberman, Stanley William Hayter, Roy Lichtenstein, André Masson, Robert Motherwell, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol and Saul Steinberg.

His brother Morris Schapiro donates at the 90th birthday Meyer Schapiro's $ 1 million to preserve the " Meyer Schapiro Professorship of Modern Art and Theory".