Joel Shapiro's artwork is a part of Formalism.
Formalism is “art for the sake of art.” The theory behind Formalism is that the piece of art can stand alone just based on its aesthetic values. The form of the object is of the biggest concern to the artist. For example, Joel Shapiro’s untitled sculptures are successful, at least to him, because they the emphasis is based on its physical structure and form and relies on abstraction. The statues have a lot of attention brought upon themselves based on the materials and their colors that make them, but most importantly because of how they are shaped and what they represent, in this case the human body. Post-modernists do not see art the same way. For them, they believe art can’t be looked at without taking into account the aesthetics and ethics involved in the process. There are several ways to describe Post-modernism, such as chaotic, anti-Modernism and anti-Enlightenment.
Formalism and Realism seem to go together. When you look at art from these two theories explanations are not needed. It’s like you can look at the art and not have to wonder what in the world you’re looking at. It seems like Post-Modernism is more similar to Expressionism than anything else, because it can be abstract. To us, different forms of these two arts might not even look like art at all and we may find ourselves asking “Why is That Art?”