| Caption | Image Copyright © Robert S. Nover 1973-2010. All Rights Reserved. |
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| Birth date | |
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| Birth place | New York City |
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| Nationality | American |
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| Occupation | Artist, Writer, Editor & Educator |
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Mira Schor (
b. in
New York City in 1950) is an American artist, writer, editor, and educator, known for her
contributions to the critical discourse on the status of
painting in
contemporary art and culture as well as to
feminist art history and criticism.
Early life and education
Mira Schor's parents
Ilya and
Resia Schor were
Polish-born artists who came to the US in 1941. (In 2003, Schor produced a
video documentary on her parents’ work,
The Tale of the Goldsmith’s Floor, originally created for the 2003 Brown University and
differences conference, “The Lure of the Detail,”). Mira Schor and her older sister
Naomi Schor (1943–2001), a noted scholar of
French Literature and
Feminist theory, were both educated at the
Lycée Français de New York. After receiving her
Baccalauréat in 1967, Mira Schor studied
art history at
New York University (WSC
B.A. 1970). During this time she worked as an assistant to
Red Grooms and
Mimi Gross. She received a
Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting from
California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1973. There she was a participant in the CalArts Feminist Art Program’s renowned project
Womanhouse (1972). In the Feminist Art Program she studied with
Miriam Shapiro and
Judy Chicago. Later at CalArts she studied with
Los Angeles-born sculptor Stephan Von Huene.
Painting
Schor’s visual work balances political and theoretical concerns with formalist and material passions. Her work has included major periods in which gendered narrative and representation of the body has been featured, but the predominant focus of her work has been representation of language in
drawing and
painting. Her paintings have been foregrounded by these various disciplines: by painting, with shows such as "Slow Art: Painting in New York Now," at
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center; by
feminism, with exhibitions such as "Sexual Politics:
Judy Chicago's 'Dinner Party' in Feminist Art History," at the
Armand Hammer Museum; and by language, with shows such as "Poetry Plastique," at
Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York.
Her work has also been exhibited in New York at the Edward Thorp Gallery, Horodner Romley Gallery, and in group exhibitions including at the Santa Monica Museum, the Armand Hammer Museum, PS 1, The Neuberger Museum, Marianne Boesky Gallery, and the Aldrich Museum. Her visual work and her writings are included in Art and Feminism (2001) and Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party in Feminist Art History (1996). Most recently, Schor exhibited her work at Momenta Art in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in a solo exhibition entitled "Suddenly," marking a departure in Schor's work, from the depiction of language as image to the suggestion of its lack in a space where we expect to see it. A solo exhibition, "Mira Schor: Paintings From the Nineties To Now," will open at CB1 Gallery in Los Angeles, CA on November 20, 2010 and be on view through January 9, 2011.
Gallery
Writing and Scholarship
Schor has written frequently on issues of gender representation, including “Backlash and Appropriation,” a chapter of
The Power of Feminist Art, 1994, an historical overview of the
Feminist movement published by
Abrams, “Patrilineage”, 2002, republished in
The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader edited by
Amelia Jones, and on artists such as
Ida Applebroog,
Mary Kelly, and
Ana Mendieta. Schor is the author of
Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture, 1997, and co-editor of
M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings, Theory, and Criticism, 2000, and of
M/E/A/N/I/NG Online. Schor has sometimes been criticized for taking an
essentialist position in terms of feminism and many of her writings take on this debate. In her writings on paintings in essays such as “Figure/Ground,” 2001, Schor is seen as making a case for the relevance of painting in a post-medium
visual culture and for arguing for the compatibility and mutuality of painterly and theoretical practices.
In 2010 she delivered a lecture called "On Failure and Anonymity" for a collaborative project called #class at Winkleman Gallery in New York.
Teaching
She taught at
NSCAD in
Halifax,
Nova Scotia (1974–1978),
SUNY Purchase (1983–1985),
Sarah Lawrence College (1991–1994),
RISD (1999–2000), and was a resident artist at
Skowhegan School in 1995. She has also taught in the Vermont College and MECA low-residency
MFA programs as an artist/teacher, and at
School of Visual Arts in the
MFA in
Art Criticism and Writing Program in 2006. For over a decade she has taught in the Fine Arts Department at
Parsons The New School for Design.
Books
A Decade of Negative Thinking: Essays on Art, Politics, and Daily Life, 2010
The Extreme of the Middle: Writings of Jack Tworkov, Yale University Press, 2009.
M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artists' Writings, Theory, and Criticism, co-edited with Susan Bee, Duke University Press, 2000.
Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture, Duke University Press, 1997.
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Essays
“I am not now nor have I ever been …”, Brooklyn Rail, February 2008
“She Demon Spawn from Hell,” M/E/A/N/I/NG Online, 2006
"Backlash and Appropriation" in The Power of Feminist Art, Norma Broude & Mary Garrard, eds, Abrams, 1994
"Patrilineage," Feminist Art Criticism issue, Art Journal 50, No. 2 Summer 1991. Anthologized in New Feminist Criticism: Art/Identity/Action, HarperCollins, 1994 and The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, Routledge, 2003; Translated into Czech, Neviditelná zena, Antologie soucasneho americkeko mysleni o feminismu, dejinach a vizualite, Martina Pachmanova, ed., One Woman Press, Prague, 2002.
“Figure/Ground,” M/E/A/N/I/N/G #6, reprinted in Wet & M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology, excerpted in Helen Reckitt & Peggy Phelan, Art and Feminism, London & New York: Phaidon Press Ltd., 2001.
"Medusa Redux: Ida Applebroog and the Spaces of Postmodernity,"
Artforum, March. Updated and published as catalogue essay for
Ida Applebroog, Orchard Gallery,
Derry,
Northern Ireland, 1993; excerpts included in
Ida Applebroog, Are You Bleeding Yet?, New York: La Maison Red, 2002.
"On Failure and Anonymity," Heresies 25, 1990.
“Appropriated Sexuality,” M/E/A/N/I/N/G #1, 1986. Anthologized in Theories of Contemporary Art, Richard Hertz, ed. (Prentice Hall, 1985), and republished in Wet and M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artists' Writings, Theory, and Criticism.
Editor
Schor is the co-founder and co-editor, with Susan Bee, of the art journal,
M/E/A/N/I/N/G.
M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artists' Writings, Theory, and Criticism, was published by Duke University Press in 2000. The archive of the journal was acquired by the
Beinecke Library at Yale University in 2007. This respected artist-run editorial project continues at
M/E/A/N/I/NG Online
Grants and Awards
Residency at The Rockefeller Foundation’s Study and Center in Bellagio, Italy, 2001.
College Art Association’s
Frank Jewett Mather Award in Art Criticism, 1999.
Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 1997.
Guggenheim Fellowship in Painting, 1992.
The Space Program of The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation, 1992.
National Endowment for the Arts, Visual Arts Fellowship in Painting, 1985.
Bibliography
Knechtel, Tom. "Mira Schor: WarCrawl,” 2008, in Critical Models vol.1
Drucker, Johanna. Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity, UChicago Press, 2006. 124-8, color plate 6.
Jones, Amelia. Sexual Politics. UCLA at the Armand Hammer of Art and Cultural Center, UC Press, 2003.
Drucker, Johanna. The Century of Artists' Books, Granary Books, 1995.
Duncan, Michael. "Reviews," Art in America, April 1994.
Canning, Sue. "Reviews," Art Papers, Volume 18, no. 1, January & February 1994.
Humphrey, David. "New York FAX," Art Issues, no. 31, January/February 1994.
Phelan, Peggy. "Developing the Negative: Mapplethorpe, Schor, and Sherman" chapter of Unmarked, Routledge, 1993.
Larson, Kay. "The Painting Pyramid," New York Magazine, May 25, 1992.
Morgan, Robert C. "After The Deluge: The Return of the Inner Directed Artist," Arts Magazine, March, 1992. Reprinted with reproduction in After the Deluge: Essays for Art in the Nineties. New York: Red Bass, 1993.
Notes
External links
http://www.dukeupress.edu/books.php3?isbn=978-0-8223-4602-9
http://writing.upenn.edu/pepc/meaning/
http://www.artonair.org/archives/j/content/view/581/147/
http://www.miraschor.com/
http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300141023
Mira Schor at CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles
Category:1950 births
Category:American painters
Category:Contemporary artists
Category:American women artists
Category:Jewish artists
Category:American art critics
Category:Feminist theory
Category:Jewish feminists
Category:Living people
Category:Frank Jewett Mather Award winners
Category:Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University faculty
