The Critic's Notebook
James Panero
April 14, 2021
“Dee Shapiro: In The Beginning. . . Selections From 1974 through 1980,” at David Richard Gallery (through April 23): Painting came late to abstraction, while textiles have employed abstract patterns since, well, about the first time warp met weft. In the 1970s, abstract painters explored this tradition through a movement known as Pattern and Decoration. For Dee Shapiro, that meant knotting intricate lines of paint, extruded directly from the tube, into patterns that resembled knitting and rug-making. “In The Beginning. . . Selections From 1974 through 1980,” a survey of Shapiro’s intensely patterned early production, is now on view at East Harlem’s David Richard Gallery with over a dozen works tied together in acrylic, watercolor, and pencil. —JP