TitleProvide
Artist
Miriam Schapiro
(1923 - 2015)
Date1982
MediumAcrylic and fabric on tan wove paper
DimensionsSheet size: 34 3/4 × 35 3/4 in.
Other (Backing board): 35 × 36 in.
SignedSigned at lower right in black ink: "M. Schapiro '82".
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, September 20, 2000
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number2000.12
Label TextMiriam Schapiro established herself as a pioneering feminist artist in the late 1960s and early 1970s and a leader of the Pattern and Decoration movement of the mid-1970s. Born in Toronto and raised in New York City, Schapiro studied art at Iowa University in the 1940s, where she met her husband, artist Paul Brach (1924-2007). Initially adopting the grand gestures of Abstract Expressionism in her paintings, by the early 1960s Schapiro eschewed expressionist techniques and began working with the cool reserve of minimalist geometry. By the early 1970s, in response to the limitations of a dogmatic modernism and along with artist Melissa Meyer, Schapiro created what she called "femmage," or feminist-inspired collage. In 1971 she partnered with artist Judy Chicago to form the seminal Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Art, Valencia.Like much of Schapiro's mature work, "Provide" incorporates painting in acrylic with collaged pieces of fabric, a material stereotypically associated with sewing, embroidery and other types of "woman's work." In the late 1970s Schapiro began using the fan and the heart shape, symbols that are also stereotypically associated with femininity. In "Provide" the artist combines the heart shape with floral imagery and the word "provide" to further underscore, and thus question, notions of accepted domestic gender roles. The artist's use of domestic "craft" as "high art" combined with inherently gendered imagery has resulted in a pointed critique of the patriarchal paradigms that exist both inside and outside the art world.
