How do you link language and images?

I always described it as language as image. I think the roots of my use of language, the image of language, or language as image in my work, has its roots in my family history. My father, Ilya Schor was an artist, and he specialized in Judaica. I did not read Hebrew, so I only could experience the language on my father's work, which was very beautifully done as image. The connection between art and language, or drawing and language form, and the letters of language were established before I could write and read myself. I love learning how to write, and to me, it was like drawing. There was a real bond already before I became an artist between language, the image of language, and language as image. At first, it was just block letters and just words. What I wanted to do was to express also that women were filled with language because when I became an artist, I was very, very committed to the representation of the reality of living inside a female body, what it meant to live inside a female body. I had a sense that no one really cared what was inside women's minds, really, that society itself was not really concerned with that. And so, I began to think of it as, women are filled with language. And my task as an artist or my desire was to express that in my work. 

The only other part that I didn't really go into is that I've complicated matters by also being a writer. In my mid-30s, I began to write about art and about teaching and about politics. And that was one of my challenges in later works in the '90s, when I started to work in oil, was to embed language within materialities. In a way, I'm still bringing a feminist sensibility and maybe a female sense of embodiment, and bringing language into that through the incredible flesh-like quality of oil, which I love. 

What is your involvement in the feminist movement?

Well, I'm a very lucky person, generationally, because I came of age with the feminist movement, the second-wave feminism that began to develop at the end of the 1960s, and really became in the United States anyway, it was like a national movement with a tremendous amount of excitement behind it. But feminism answered a question, an existential question for me. I valued my intelligence, and I valued language, and I valued my artistic abilities.

I also felt resistance like every woman does to this moment, resistance to your voice being heard or your ambitions being taken seriously. And there were role models, but mostly they were 19th-century women writers. I was just so lucky that I had that to bring me forward. And then I was lucky again because I decided to go to CalArts [California Institute of Arts]. But my sister heard of CalArts and told me about the experimental nature of the school and that these programs were going to be planned, the feminist program, the following year in art. So I had to decide whether I wanted to be part of that because being part of it meant being a little separate. It was a historic moment, and this was a historic opportunity. It set the path of my life, in a way. And in the program, which we can talk more about, but it became very clear that it was very important for women to create their own discourse. If the mainstream would not allow you or would not listen to you or would not allow you the opportunity to show or to do things the way you felt was important for the work and for your ideas, you had to do it yourself.

You had to write your own art criticism, you had to curate your own shows, you had to write your own books. The other thing that I came to learn through studying art history, but then through the beginnings of feminist art history: any text keeps you in history when your images may fall out of history or even be misattributed or something. 

Is the symbolism of the dress in your exhibition linked to your feminist approach?

I love clothing, and I love the history of costumes. When I went to college, I actually even went on a visit to Pratt Institute, which was famous for its fashion department. And the minute I visited, I understood that, of course, I wasn't really interested in becoming a fashion designer. I was interested in drawing. But I had done hundreds and hundreds of drawings. I taught myself how to do it the way… in those days in the New York Times, the main newspaper in New York, there were no photographs of Paris fashion shows. They were drawing, sketches, and I taught myself how to do it. So when I got out of art school, I had done a few things in the feminist program that had to do with costume or items of women's clothing, but more satirically.

First, I thought, “Well, I'll just do some paintings of dresses, but with no figure in them, just empty dresses”. I didn't even think it. I just did it. Then I thought, “Well, I don't need the figure-ground relation. I don't really need the ground. I will look for the form”. So, I cut away the background. So then, I just had the shape of the dress. And then, I always follow form as much as I follow whatever narrative. 

So over a period of starting in '74, they became more surrealistic, simpler, more sculptural. They remained small. And then the next step was to do those things life-size. They didn't have language. And at that point, I was beginning to think about, how does the viewer interact with this object, which is fragile. Then gradually, there were a number of works, and one was a work that I did that I call Book of Pages. It's simply exactly what that sounds like with writing and a lot of dry pigment. It's a very physical object. And I had done that work because I wanted to do something that was a major work, but not big in size. So, it's just a book that you turn the pages of.

So now I had the dress, and I had the pages, and that work was on rice paper and the materials. So all of that came together in '77 with both the masks and then the dresses. 

How do you work on the materiality of your artworks? 

This is the first time they've ever been framed, but their original existence was as things, and they were on the wall. I didn't have even the possibility of imagining framing them, but framing them actually offers the ability to see front and back. It precludes the opportunity to turn the pages. The paper, it never gave me the opportunity. It suggested to me, like if I was working on a piece of rice paper, I started with more or less normal art papers, the first dresses, and then I had some rice paper that I'd inherited from my father because he had made prints, so I just had it around for years. I thought, “Well, I'll try the rice paper”. And in a way, as I worked on it, it suggested that it was transparent. And it suggested that as I did one mask or dress or whatever, that it left the trace of itself on the paper. For some reason, I left the masks, but I continued working with paper until the mid '80s in different ways. And then, I made the transition to oil paint around that time.

The exhibition displays only one painting. What is its story? 

If we go back to the fact that I joined the Feminist Art Program when I got to CalArts in the fall of 1971, they had a project. The women who had already been there had already discussed the idea of doing a project that would be collaborative. They decided on the idea of a house, and so that was the title, was “Woman House”, not “the Woman House”, but “Woman House”. They had already actually found a house in Hollywood that was going to be demolished for urban renewal. So they rented it from the city of Hollywood for $1 or something like that. They tried to arrive at what the house would be through consciousness-raising sessions, which was very much a part of the feminist movement or the women's liberation movement at that time, where you would select a subject – money, sex, father, mother, clothing – different things to share your experiences with. And then, the idea was that the project at Woman House would be developed, and then you also had the option of a room, and you had to have ideas about the room. To me, I took it as the opportunity to do something I'd never done, which was to do a large painting.

I was painting women in rooms, often at night, and also sometimes looking out on a red moon. To me, that was very exciting to choose, but I had to choose a room where I could have the walls without windows. So, I chose a walk-in closet. Which meant I had no light. But anyway, it was the biggest work I'd ever done. It was a self-portrait of myself. Then there were phases of the moon. So, it was called Red Moon Room. I was standing in the painting, self-portrait, pointing at the moon. The funny thing about the painting downstairs is that the only thing that's red is the moon. And it's actually really a very blue painting. But I wouldn't say it's tragic exactly. But there's a sadness to the Red Moon Room. When you get to be my age, you do think “Have I done what I intended to do? Have I done what I set out in life to do? Have I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish?” And that's what the figure is asking the moon. Here is time’s spirit. This is what I've done. 

How did you design the display for the "Moon Room" installation?

I'm very, very happy with the installation. The fact that the floor is white was very important to me, especially because that room was not originally a conventional exhibition space for flat paintings or drawings. But I felt that the works had to float. Also, what I really think is amazing is that that work is facing Crazy Lady, which was one of the most risk-taking objects that I've ever made and expresses the most anxiety, in a way, of all of the dresses. Some of which are very beautiful, some are very self-contained, and some are fragile, but Crazy Lady is more than fragile. The fact that that’s facing– with the blue on – that it’s facing the new Red Moon Room is very interesting to me. 

How do you want visitors to feel when they see your exhibition? 

My sense of success of an artwork is if somebody who is not an artist comes in and feels free enough and not worried about whether they know anything about art or whatever. But if they express what they see and feel, often they hit it right on the nose. They really get it. And so, I hope that happens. But it's also personal. Some people find the things scary or they bring their own emotions to it. And that I can't guess.

What does the title "Mythologies américaines" of the exhibition cycle evoke for you? 

What I thought about first was that in recent years, people have said to me that my work has a European feeling, and that has an interesting history for me. So, I was born in New York City. I'm an American. My parents were refugees, lucky to save their lives. They lived in Paris when the Germans were on their way into Paris. They arrive in New York City just as abstract expressionism is beginning to take hold. And then in my childhood, the discussions at the family table had to do with the art criticism at that time and the critical point of view, which was very dogmatic. The American artists at that time felt that they had to separate themselves from Europe. They had to break from Europe and assert their own identity. So they started criticising Europe, that the aesthetic was too delicate, too feminine, too decorative, a very bad word. As I grew up, I was semi-European as well. I think there is an American aspect to my work. I began to do, I took the shape of the dress and turned it into a pencil that was more simplified, placing it into landscape. They had a mystical quality to them, beautiful colour. And suddenly I thought, for the first time, I feel like an American artist because I am touching on an American tradition of mystical landscape painting. In the nineteenth century, there were also artists that did work where there was a spiritual quality to the landscapes. And so I would say, actually, out loud, when I would talk about my work, I would say, “This is the first time where I really feel like I'm part of an American tradition”.

Now, I think that my work hovers on both sides because the painting downstairs. It's really very similar to some paintings that were very, very important to me when I was a teenager and a young woman. Giotto's Chapel, the Scrovegni Chapel, and the way in which space is compressed and the use of blue. So in a way, I've reverted back to some of my European roots. But then I'm also doing some quite political work. It still has probably a European flavour. So, I’m both. I'm a dual figure, even though I'm an American.