Mira Schor

Mira Schor studied at Lycée français de New York, New York University and California Institute of the Arts. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is visual arts. Places of work recorded in the authority are New York City. Employment is recorded with The New School and California Institute of the Arts. Work by Mira Schor is recorded in the collections of Hessel Museum of Art. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship, Anonymous Was A Woman Award and European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award.

• Name — Mira Schor • Born — 1 June 1950 • Birthplace — New York City • Occupation — Artist, writer, editor, educator, academic, theorist

Mira Schor's parents Ilya and Resia Schor were Polish Jewish artists who came to the United States in 1941. 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 attended the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) from 1972-1973, receiving a Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting from 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.

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. In 1969, Yvonne Jacquette lent her a book of Rajput painting and poetry, which she claimed had a "huge, huge influence" on her. In the 1980s and 90s, Schor's work was also 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, The Neuberger Museum, 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). In 2009 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," was held at CB1 Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (November 20, 2010 – January 9, 2011) with a catalogue essay by art historian Amelia Jones. Schor exhibited her work at Marvelli Gallery 1= in 2012. In 2009 painter and critic Robert Berlind wrote, "An intimist whose candor is akin to Emily Dickinson’s.". In a 2012 New York Times review, critic Roberta Smith wrote "Mira Schor’s small, sharp, quirky paintings have been thorns in the side of the medium for more than three decades now" and "Ms. Schor hardly tells the whole story of creative labor, but she lays out its essential elements: the isolation, reading, thinking and percolation that enable a Voice to emerge. At once poetic, lyrical and oddly real, her paintings give rare and sardonic visual form to the life, and the work, of the mind". Reviews of Schor's recent exhibitions have been published in Art in America and on Artforum.com.

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

• "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.

• Illustration — Mira Schor, 2007 • Illustration — Mira Schor, Postcard: August 29, 1976. Front side, ink and media on rice paper, 6" × 5", 1976 • Illustration — Mira Schor, Blue Suddenly, oil on linen, 18" × 25", 2005 • Illustration — Mira Schor, Sign, oil on linen, 12" × 16", 2005 • Illustration — Mira Schor, Portrait of my Brain, oil on linen, 16" × 12", 2007 • Illustration — Mira Schor, Past, Present, And, oil and gesso on linen, 12" × 16", 2009