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Lot Essay
Joel Shapiro's sculptures unite Minimalist forms with Expressionist content and thereby create a bridge between the seemingly conflicting tenets of austere abstraction and emotive figuration. The result has been described as Post-Minimalist, the concious breaking of purist taboos against imagery, sentiment and subject matter.
"The stiff-limbed, deadpan figures ... are eerier than a horrifically dressed scarecrow", writes Phyllis tuchman. "At first Shapiro's world calls to mind the lands Gulliver visited, but his uninhabitable buildings and tumblings creatures are even more frighteningly expressive of our own times. While you recognise formal ideas he inherited from Carl Andre and Donald Judd, you sense a mood of alienation and discomfort shared with the surrealism of Alberto Giacometti." (P. Tuchman, 'Joel Shapiro', in 'Art of our Time', London 1984, p.29.)
"The stiff-limbed, deadpan figures ... are eerier than a horrifically dressed scarecrow", writes Phyllis tuchman. "At first Shapiro's world calls to mind the lands Gulliver visited, but his uninhabitable buildings and tumblings creatures are even more frighteningly expressive of our own times. While you recognise formal ideas he inherited from Carl Andre and Donald Judd, you sense a mood of alienation and discomfort shared with the surrealism of Alberto Giacometti." (P. Tuchman, 'Joel Shapiro', in 'Art of our Time', London 1984, p.29.)