ABSTRACT
For the spirit of celebration and continuity with which Miriam Schapiro approached her collaboration with Mary Cassatt is very different indeed from the mocking, and ultimately competitive, nihilism with which Marcel Duchamp approached his "collaboration" with Leonardo da Vinci. It is in terms, then, of a dialogue with an older tradition of modernism, one that has its roots in both Symbolism and the decorative arts and crafts movements of the turn of the century, which the art of Miriam Schapiro is most properly understood. It is neither well served nor illuminated, in his view, by the short-sightedness of contemporary criticism, which insists upon classifying it with the work of a variety of other artists who nowadays describe their art as "decorative." It is, ironically, the very content of Schapiro's art that may someday secure for other artists their right to be "merely decorative," and to produce a "high art" that is free to eschew significance other than the "merely" visual.
