In conjunction with ICA Miami’s exhibition Miriam Schapiro: 1967–1972, art historian Lindsay Caplan will present original scholarship examining this pivotal period in Schapiro’s career, with particular attention to the artist’s brief but formative engagement with computers. Caplan unpacks the significance of Schapiro’s two years of computer-based artmaking within a decades-long practice, situating this work in relation to the radical feminist concerns that permeated much of early computer art.
Through a focused selection of paintings, ICA Miami’s exhibition traces Schapiro’s transition from hard-edge geometric abstraction to her gendered, anthropomorphic “central core imagery.” These works reveal the foundations of her later explorations of collage and craft within the Pattern and Decoration movement. Central to this evolution was Schapiro’s pioneering experimentation with early digital image production technologies.
