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Mira Schor (b. New York City, New York, June 1, 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 was born in New York City June 1, 1950. Her parents Ilya Schor and Resia Schor were Polish-born artists who came to the United States 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,” (“The Tale of The Goldsmith’s Floor,” an illustrated video script, appears in differences, Volume 14, Number 3, Fall 2003). Mira Schor and her sister Naomi Schor (1943-2001), a noted scholar of French Literature and Feminist theory, were both educated at the Lyçée Français de New York. After receiving her Baccalauréat in 1967, Mira Schor studied art history at New York University (WSC BA 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 paintings. 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 shows such as Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party" in Feminist Art History, at the Arm and Hammer Museum; and by language, with shows such as Poetry Plastique, at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York.

Her work has 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 (Phaidon, 2001) and Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party in Feminist Art History (University of California Press, 1996).

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, (both from Duke University Press) 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.

Teaching

She taught at NSCAD in Halifax (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, Duke University Press, 2009
The Extreme of the Middle: Writings of Jack Tworkov, Yale University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780300141023
M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artists' Writings, Theory, and Criticism, co-edited with Susan Bee, Duke University Press 2000. ISBN 0822325667
Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture, Duke University Press, 1997. ISBN 0822319152

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," The Power of Feminist Art, Norma Broude & Mary Garrard, eds, Harry N. Abrams, 1994
"Patrilineage," Feminist Art Criticism issue, Art Journal Summer Vol.50, No.2, 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 Limited, 2001.
"Medusa Redux: Ida Applebroog and the Spaces of Postmodernity," Artforum, March issue. Updated and published as catalogue essay for Ida Applebroog, The 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 Bienecke Library at Yale University in 2007. This much 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, U. of Chicago Press, 2006. 124-8, color plate 6. ISBN 0226165051
Jones, Amelia. Sexual Politics. UCLA at the Armand Hammer of Art and Cultural Center, U. of CA Press, 2003. ISBN 0262680998
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.

External Links

http://writing.upenn.edu/pepc/meaning/
http://www.artonair.org/archives/j/content/view/581/147/
http://www.miraschor.com/