A Decade of Negative Thinking: Essays on Art, Politics, and Daily Life
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, Clichés, 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.
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliate
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.
"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"
