Anonymous was a Woman
Brooklyn Museum photograph
Object Label
Miriam Schapiro’s collages, like those of Taiye Idahor, were created to make connections with women of the past and to rebalance conventional male-dominated narratives. A “femmage” (her term for a feminist collage), Anonymous was a Woman celebrates female textile artists. Its roughly cut lace, cotton, and mesh squares set into acrylic paint evoke patchwork quilts. Only in recent years have museums recognized quilts—made almost exclusively by women, whose names were often unrecorded—as art. In the late 1960s, Schapiro spurned a successful abstract-painting career to explore an oft-neglected corner of art history known as “craft” or, in many cases dismissively, as “women’s work.” Inverting the pejorative term “craft,” her collages put everyday women’s creativity in a place of honor, the museum.
Caption
Miriam Schapiro American, 1923–2015. Anonymous was a Woman, 1976. Acrylic and collage on paper, 30 × 22 in. (76.2 × 55.9 cm) frame: 33 3/4 × 25 3/4 × 1 1/2 in. (85.7 × 65.4 × 3.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Amy Wolf and John Hatfield in memory of Cynthia Africano, 2005.61. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2005.61_PS1.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Gallery
Not on view
Artist
Title
Anonymous was a Woman
Portfolio
Date
1976
Medium
Acrylic and collage on paper
Classification
Dimensions
30 × 22 in. (76.2 × 55.9 cm) frame: 33 3/4 × 25 3/4 × 1 1/2 in. (85.7 × 65.4 × 3.8 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Amy Wolf and John Hatfield in memory of Cynthia Africano
Accession Number
2005.61
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
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Frequent Art Questions
I don't get the two on the left.
The one on the top is by Miriam Schapiro, who was known as a leader of the Pattern & Decoration Movement, which advocated for the use of craft materials and techniques often devalued as "women's work" such as quilting, knitting, sewing, etc. She worked in the opposite direction from the concurrent conceptual and minimalist art movements, using color and pattern to break down the division between art and craft. Hence, the quilt-like imagery of this painting.Though using a very different style, Marjorie Strider was also interested in breaking down barriers between high and low, culture and domesticity. She puts her own spin on the pop art movement of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Her commercialized packaging is ruptured, oozing, unable to contain its contents, which can be read as the actual product or perhaps a reference to the spread of consumerism?Both works also play with our concept of painting as flat, or as a kind of "non-material" -- Schapiro transforms the materiality of her work through references to craft and fabric. Strider moves between a more realistic depiction of the packaging and the cartoon-like blue ooze. Both work against viewer expectations.Thank you so much.
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