Meyer Schapiro (
1904-
1996) was an art historian who was born in
Siauliai,
Lithuania September 23, 1904, but moved to the
Brooklyn,
United States of America in 1907. He died at his home in
Manhattan,
New York,
March 3 at the age of
91.
Meyer Schapiro had a brother, Morris Schapiro, and was married to Dr. Lillian Milgrim, and had a daughter, Miriam, and a son, Ernest.
He won a both a Pulitzer Scholarship and a Regents Scholarship, and started attending Columbia University in 1920 at the age of 16. He began teaching at Columbia in 1928, and received his PhD in 1929. He became a full professor in 1952, University Professor in 1965, and University Professor Emeritus in 1973. He was awarded the Alexander Hamilton Medal and an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University in 1975.
He also taught at New York University from (1932-36), the New School for Social Research (1936-52), and lectured at Harvard University, Oxford University and the Collège de France. He was honoured with the title of Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation in 1987, and was a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Philosophical Society.
Starting off, Schapiro explored the aesthetics of Romanesque sculpture, and went on to become a widely recognized supporter and critic of modern art.
Aside from modern art, he specialised in Byzantine, medieval, Christian, and the art of the 1800s. What interested Schapiro was the history of the aesthetics of art, as seen through the lenses of anthropology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and sociology.
Schapiro was also an artist himself, having done sketches, paintings, and sculpture most of his life.
His essays:
"The Nature of Abstract Art" (1937)
"On the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Art" (1948)
"Leonardo and Freud" (1956)
His books:
Vincent Van Gogh (1950)
Cézanne (1952)
Words and Pictures (1970)
Romanesque Art (1977)
Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries (1979)
Late Antique, Early Christian and Mediaeval Art (1979)
Theory and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist and Society (1994)