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“The joints of Shapiro’s block arrangements used to have conspicuously considered, jigsaw- puzzle precision, giving the weight and balances of the figures exact local fulcrums and a sort of gathering tightness overall. The drama was as much in the coming-together of the blocks as in their branching-apart. The feel of the pieces as constructions was somewhat inward, implosive. The new figures tend to explode. Their joinery has an almost cavalier, jammed-together air, with facets brusquely cut, it seems, to let each block get off in its preferred way with as little ceremony as possible” (P. Schjeldahl, Joel Shapiro: Sculpture and Drawings, 1993, p. 10).