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MIRIAM SCHAPIRO Children of Paradise.
Color lithograph and collage on cream wove paper, 1984. 805x1220 mm; 31¾x48 inches (sheet), full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 60/60, from the edition variée, in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by Graphicstudio, Tampa, with the blind stamps lower right. A very good impression of this large scarce work.
Children of Paradise was produced as an edition variée, an edition where each print contains more differences from each other than in a standard edition. In this case lithographic elements were used in the background and the collaged fabrics were different in each print.
According to Graphicstudio, who published this work, "In Children of Paradise, Miriam Schapiro [1923-2015] applied the collage principles she has called 'femmage.' Schapiro has been creating femmages since the early 1970s, initially inspired by her use of found materials in her exploration of autobiographical and woman-centered themes for her contribution to Womanhouse, a feminist installation project at the California Institute of Arts. Combining scraps of fabric, lace, quilting, and other handwork with paint and printer's ink, Schapiro's femmages intentionally recall traditional handwork techniques such as appliqué and quilting.
Schapiro's strength as a colorist is clearly revealed in her bold use of vibrant and competing hues in Children of Paradise. Two articles of children's clothing, a girl's dress and a boy's suit, serve as the core elements around which Schapiro has built the composition. Layering color and texture in the form of hearts and teacups cut from fabrics and houses cut from patterned paper-all familiar in Schapiro's repertoire of images-she creates a highly structured composition that nevertheless appears unstructured, reminiscent of the haphazard arrangements of some quilts.
Schapiro worked from fabrics she brought with her to the Graphicstudio workshop--'pieces from woman's culture'--as well as material she collected in Tampa, to create about a dozen preliminary femmages before executing the edition print. In the print Schapiro's layering of transparent inks with fabrics, possibly suggesting 'levels of the past,' locks the cutout shapes into a compositional whole. The fabric heart in the bottom left corner, for example, is echoed in the background lithography, connecting the layers of the image."
Regarding her collage work, Schapiro noted, "The collagists who came before me were men, who lived in cities, and often roamed the streets at night scavenging, collecting material, their junk, from urban spaces. My world, my mother's and grandmother's world, was a different one. The fabrics I used would be beautiful if sewed into clothes or draped against windows, made into pillows, or slipped over chairs. My ‘junk,' my fabrics, allude to a particular universe, which I wish to make real, to represent."
