Time/Spirit (New Red Moon Room)

Artist, writer, editor, teacher, Mira Schor work at the intersection of language and painting. As an American artist, she has a unique and singular place in the contemporary art scene through her dual commitment, both visual and intellectual.

The painting Time/Spirit (New Red Moon Room) was created as a tribute to the fiftieth anniversary of the CalArts Feminist Art Program's "Womanhouse" exhibition, organized in Los Angeles in 1972 while Mira Schor was a graduate student and a participant in the Program. In an unremitting questioning of painting, the artist conjures up her own representation in this oil on canvas dating from 2022. This work becomes the contemporary counterpart to Red Moon Room: illuminated by a bright red moon, the figure of the artist, painted in clear lines, standing as if in motion, now gives way to a reclining representation, drawn with a few hurried lines. While there is a reference to the odalisque, here the bedridden model is in the middle of reading a book open to the page "Time/Spirit", a literal translation of the German word Zeitgeist, used to evoke the spirit of the times, but here tinged with a subtle irony and a certain distrust of painting cliches. This work also addresses the question of age: whereas Red Moon Room presented a young artist full of hope, Time/Spirit (New Red Moon Room) depicts a face-to-face encounter between the artist and the moon, like a dialogue about everything she has achieved in her lifetime.

Time/Spirit (New Red Moon Room) was first shown by the Pinault Collection in 2023 in Mira Schor exhibition « Moon Room », Bourse de Commerce, Paris.