Personal Appearance #3

Miriam Schapiro

1923–2015

Personal Appearance #3, 1973

Where object was made: United States

Material/technique: acrylic; collage; canvas; fabric

Credit line: Collection of Marilyn Stokstad, gift from Anna Leider

Accession number: 2020.0076

Not on display

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Bold Women

This combination of painting and collage, called “femmage” by artist Miriam Schapiro, represents ideas from the feminist art movement of the 1970s. The work merges the concepts of “feminism” with “collage” to create an approach that is anti-hierarchical and layered. This work is significant for its technical innovations generated from a feminist premise, blended with its collage aesthetic. In addition to creating art, Schapiro helped launch the influential Feminist Art Program at CalArts in California.

Power Clashing: Clothing, Collage, and Contemporary Identities

The expressive colors, bold patterns, and quilt-like arrangement of fabrics in Schapiro’s painting characterize her practice of “femmage,” a term used by the artist to describe both the collage technique of her paintings and their feminist context. Femmage challenges the hierarchies of art and craft by using materials traditionally defined as feminine. For Schapiro, paying homage to the historically undervalued practices of sewing, quilting, and embroidering was “to choose something considered trivial in the culture and transform it into a heroic form.”

Power Clashing: Clothing, Collage, and Contemporary Identities