A Decade of Negative Thinking: Essays on Art, Politics, and Daily Life (Hardback)

Mira Schor (author)

£87.00

Hardback 336 Pages / Published: 25/01/2010

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Synopsis

A Decade of Negative Thinking brings together writings on contemporary art and culture by the painter and feminist art theorist Mira Schor. Mixing theory and practice, the personal and the political, she tackles questions about the place of feminism in art and political discourse, the aesthetics and values of contemporary painting, and the influence of the market on the creation of art. Schor writes across disciplines and is committed to the fluid interrelationship between a formalist aesthetic, a literary sensibility, and a strongly political viewpoint. Her critical views are expressed with poetry and humor in the accessible language that has been her hallmark, and her perspective is informed by her dual practice as a painter and writer and by her experience as a teacher of art.

In essays such as "The ism that dare not speak its name," "Generation 2.5," "Like a Veneer," "Modest Painting," "Blurring Richter," and "Trite Tropes, Cliches, or the Persistence of Styles," Schor considers how artists relate to and represent the past and how the art market influences their choices: whether or not to disavow a social movement, to explicitly compare their work to that of a canonical artist, or to take up an exhausted style. She places her writings in the rich transitory space between the near past and the "nextmodern." Witty, brave, rigorous, and heartfelt, Schor's essays are impassioned reflections on art, politics, and criticism.

Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822345848
Number of pages: 336
Weight: 703 g
Dimensions: 241 x 159 x 30 mm

MEDIA REVIEWS

"Mira Schor reminds us that some of the best, and most eye-opening, writing on art has always been made by artists themselves. The essays in A Decade of Negative Thinking demolish countless widely held assumptions about contemporary art, and do so with a compelling blend of skepticism and passion."-Raphael Rubinstein, author of Polychrome Profusion: Selected Art Criticism, 1990-2002
"This collection of essays by one of the most engaging writers of contemporary art critically excavates and redefines the enduring questions in aesthetics and politics with extraordinary verve and urgency."-Gunalan Nadarajan, Vice Provost for Research, Maryland Institute College of Art
"An excellent new book. . . ." -- Holland Cotter * New York Times *
"Witty and lucid, showing that she's a believer in art's power, despite all the naysaying." -- David O'Neill * Bookforum *
"Schor is both an artist and a writer, maybe the perfect person to consider in this search for uncorrupt, valuable criticism. In her excellent book A Decade of Negative Thinking, she describes anonymous online commenting as the worst possible type of criticism, because it almost always falls into what she calls the 'sucks/bullshit' mode. (Ah, yup.) If you're looking for the opposite of that, pick up the book." -- Jen Graves * The Stranger *
"Schor stakes out her own distinctive critical territory at the intersections of imagination and practice, concept and craft, anger and hope, humor and gravity. . . . It's refreshing to accompany Schor as she look sat and opines on the state of culture. As she concludes in the book's final essay, two qualities an artist can use to escape the trap of recipe art are 'necessity , and having something to say with an investment in the formal means you use to say it.' Schor has both." -- Kathleen Rooney * Bitch *
"The essays collected in A Decade of Negative Thinking present lucid, highly engaged and engaging reflections on the politics, rhetoric and political economy of artistic practice." -- Matt Davies * Visual Studies *