Decade of Negative Thinking

Mira Schor is a painter, writer, and teacher living in New York. She is the author of Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture and an editor of The Extreme of the Middle: The Writings of Jack Tworkov (forthcoming) and M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings, Theory, and Criticism, also published by Duke University Press. Schor is a recipient of the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award in Art Criticism.

• Preface Introduction Part 1:She Said, She Said: Feminist Debates, 1971–2009 The ism that dare not speak its name Anonymity as a Political Tactic: Art Blogs, Feminism, Writing, and Politics Generation 2.5 Email to a Young Woman Artist The Womanhouse Films Miss Elizabeth Bennett Goes to Feminist Boot Camp Part 2:Painting Some Notes on Women and Abstraction and a Curious Case History: Alice Neel as a Great Abstract Painter Like a Veneer Modest Painting Blurring Richter Off the Grid: Weather Conditions in Lower Manhattan, September 11, 2001 to October 2, 2001 Part 3:Trite Tropes Trite Tropes, ClichÉs, or the Persistence of Styles Recipe Art Work and Play New Tales of Scheherazade Appendix: Work document: Grey Notes Bibliography Index

“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)