America’s greatest empiricist’. Review of: Meyer Schapiro’s Critical Debates: Art Through a Modern American Mind by C. Oliver O’Donnell, University Park: Penn State University Press, 2019, 272pp, 36 b. & w. illus. ISBN 9780271084640

In this first biography of Meyer Schapiro, C. Oliver O’Donnell presents an account of Schapiro as theorist, to connect him more thoroughly to intellectual trends of the twentieth century. O’Donnell makes his case through a series of well-researched “debates” in which Schapiro engaged, including Martin Heidegger and Sigmund Freud. This review considers the interpretation of these encounters and the profile of Schapiro that we are left with