Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971

 

The  Black American, queer artist has been at work professionally on her art since graduating with a masters in art in 2002. 

 

Her focus is Black women.  Among these her mother, friends and lovers, and images taken from magazines of the 1970’s and ’80’s.  Very recently she has said that she is studying Black female erotica in French publications of the 1950’s. 

 

The artist’s aim is to bring into mainstream view female desire and sexuality and autonomy; and the variety of female beauty.

In this goal, she was and still is a pioneer.

 

 

 

Whatever You Want, 2004, rhinestones, acrylic and enamel on panel

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Rubell Museum, Miami loan to the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia in 2024

A pose taken from Blaxploitation films.

 

 

She uses acrylic paint and enamel, embellished with the craft supplies she began with, young and without much money:  rhinestones, glitter, sequins, and yarn.  She also builds installations, creates prints, videos, and photographs; and she sculpts. 

 

She has made very large paintings to match the size of the art of white artists.

 

 

 

 

Hotter than July, 2005, rhinestones, acrylic and enamel on panel

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Rubell Museum, Miami loan to the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia in 2024

 

 

The artist is well known for her rhinestones:

 

” In relation to my work, rhinestones seemed to be the most relevant material; they provide a perfect combination of content, process, and material. As a “decorative” material, they serve to challenge our ideas of what a paintings is, and can be. There was also a great satisfaction in the slow, meditative process of gluing each and every rhinestone to the surface of the painting,” the artist has said.

 

 

 

You Can’t Stand The Thought of Another Me, 2006, rhinestone, acrylic and enamel on panel

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Private loan to the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia in 2024

 

She has used photography to build up collages of her subjects whom she places in environments which she also builds up.

 

 

 

Instant Gratification (from Brawlin’ Spitfire wrestling series), 2005, rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel on panel

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Rubell Museum, Miami loan loan to the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia in 2024

 

 

 

 

Portrait of Wrestler #5 (Brawlin Spitfire Two), Panel #123, 2007, rhinestones, acrylic and enamel on panel

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Artist loan to the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia in 2024

 

 

 

Sometimes she places her figures among swaths of luxurious upholstery fabric – a memory of and memorial to her grandmother who often re-upholstered furniture and sewed and embroidered – to invite and tickle the eye slipping among the planes created by the fabrics in a painting.

 

 

 

Baby I Am Ready Now, 2007, acrylic, rhinestone, and enamel on panel.

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Exhibited at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia in 2019

 

 

 

The artist’s women are staged and often in settings whose references she takes sometimes from French Impressionism, from Cubism, and the artists of the Harlem Renaissance. 

 

She also leans heavily into and takes from Pop art.

 

 

 

How Can I Make Love to You (If You Won’t Stand Still)?, 2007, rhinestones, acrylic and enamel on panel

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Private loan to the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia in 2024

 

 

 

Mickalene Thomas’ subjects are shown at ease in the world and supremely comfortable in their skin.

 

 

 

Din Avec La Main Dans Le Miroir, 2008, acrylic, rhinestones and enamel on wood panel.

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971.  Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia

 

 

 

 

La leçon d’amour, 2008, chromogenic print

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Artist loan to the Barnes Foundation in 2024.

 

 

 

It is very rare to see women represented by women on the walls of our museums.  It is even rarer to see queer women represented as such. Or paintings representing only Black women, queer or not.

 

The inclusion of this work in museums rejoices me.

 

 

 

Mama bush II, keep the home fires burnin’, 2006, rhinestones, acrylic and enamel on woodpanel

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Exhibited at the Barnes Foundation in 2024

 

 

That this work has reached fairly wide recognition before the current assault on the civil rights and ways of being of Black, Brown and queer communities,  on the reproductive choices and on the work choice of some women of all ethnicities, and on the very being of Trans people, is very important.

 

 

 

 

Dim All the Lights, 2009, rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel on panel.

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Private loan to the Barnes Foundation in 2024

 

 

 

 

Portrait of Mnonja, 2010, rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel on wood panel

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971.  Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

 

 

 

 

Les Trois Femmes Noires, 2011, rhinestones, acrylic and oil enamel on panels

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Loaned by North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh loan to the Barnes Foundation in 2024

 

 

 

Mickalene Thomas’ work is in the Western tradition: portraiture and landscape. She acknowledges and exults in this.

 

Her ‘odalisques’ are autonomous women; and comfortable.

 

 

 

Remember Me, 2006, acrylic, enamel and rhinestones on panel

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Private loan to the Barnes Foundation in 2024

 

 

 

 

Din, une très belles négresse #1 (Din, a very beautiful black woman #1), 2012; rhinestones, acrylic, oil and enamel on wood panel

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Loaned by the Jimenez-Colon Collection, Ponce, Puerto Rico to the Wallach Gallery, Columbia University, NY in 2018/19

 

 

 

 

La Négresse (Portrait of Laure), 1862-63, oil on canvas. 

Édouard Manet, 1832-1883, French.

Pinacoteca Giovanni e Mariella Agnelli, Turin on loan to the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, NY in 2018/19

‘Laure, une très belle négresse’ was Manet’s description of his subject.

 

 

 

 

Din, une très belles négresse #2  (Din, a very beautiful black woman #2), 2012; rhinestones, acrylic, oil and enamel on panel

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Private loan to the Barnes Foundation in 2024.

 

 

 

 

Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe: Les trois femmes noires , 2010. C-print. 

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Loaned by the artist to the Barnes Foundation in 2024.

 

 

 

Study for ‘Déjeuner sur l’Herbe’, 1863-1868, oil on canvas. 

Édouard Manet, 1832-1883, French.  The Courtauld Institute loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2023/24

 

 

 

Her work has to be viewed for the success of her techniques in the accomplishment of her goals.  As any work in this tradition.

 

 

 

 

 

Clarivel #3, 2015;  rhinestones, glitter, acrylic, enamel, and oil on panels

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Private loan to the Barnes Foundation in 2024.

 

 

 

As much as I like some of her portraits of single women,

 

 

 

Liz With Hoops, 2023, rhinestones and acrylic on canvas mounted on panel

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Loaned by the artist to the Barnes Foundation in 2024.

 

 

 

I don’t know how well she has succeeded in her goals: to extricate Black female sexuality, desire, beauty, freedom from the negativity of the male gaze, the hetero gaze so that these can come into their own.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m Feeling Good, 2014, rhinestones, acrylic, oil and enamel on panels

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Private loan to the Barnes Foundation in 2024.

 

 

 

 

I do not find many of her figures realistic. 

Some have faces and bodies made as though out of chocolate or plastic. 

 

 

as below

 

 

 

 

In this self-portrait below, look also at how alive are the photographed eyes, inserted into an immobile Pop plastic of a body overwhelmed by giant-flower wallpaper.

 

 

 

Afro Goddess Looking Forward, 2015, rhinestones, acrylic, oil on panel

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Loaned by the artist to the Barnes Foundation in 2024.

In this self-portrait, the artist has overlaid her eyes with a set of monochrome photographed eyes.

 

 

 

 

The artist has said this: …”women in my work play roles that are (…) highly constructed, and I really enjoy the psychological intensity between these figures, their gazes, and the spaces they inhabit.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And yet, in this tableau, the women, struggling for visibility against the shapes and planes and background and floor zig-zag of colours,  do not gel into a representation of buoyant life; or of relationship with each other, let alone a “psychological intensity between the figures”.

 

 

Me as Muse, 2016

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Loaned by the artist to the Barnes Foundation in 2024.

The artist with her mother and first muse, Sandra Bush; and her friend and former lover, Maya. 

 

 

 

 

 

Tete de Femme #6, 2022, rhinestones, glitter, Swarovski crystal, fabric, oil pastel, acrylic, and oil on canvas mounted on panel

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Private loan to the Barnes Foundation in 2024.

 

 

 

Granted that art-making is a form of make-believe.  

Mickalene Thomas may well may be representing an ‘enhanced’  or imagined version of queer female joy and autonomy.

 

 

 

 

November 1981, rhinestones on dye sublimation prints, 2023

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Private loan to the Barnes Foundation in 2024.

 

 

 

 

However, I don’t much care for this work because my journey through this exhibition and visits to other of her works elsewhere were interrupted

 

by the sheer discomfort of plastic, rigid flesh and frozen form and people disconnected from their co-subjects and environments; 

 

by huge canvases whose marginal and even central spaces are filled with patterns and shapes and poles so as to diminish and freeze the central figure(s) as though the subject has no more weight than a decorative element;

 

 

 

 

as above

 

 

 

and by clashing planes which slice the world of some of her paintings as if we were in an abattoir and need to run for cover.

 

as below

 

 

 

Looking at any figurative painting, you are captured by the readability of the subject’s emotions.  There is some of that here in a few of the portraits of single women or of women wrestling.

Or you are captured by the story: the subject in his/her environment, interacting with that environment. 

 

There is  none of that here.  You simply cannot interact meaningfully with a cushion, no matter how fabulously patterned. 

 

 

There is also the uncomfortable sensation I had in some of the artist’s tableaux like the one directly below

 

of being suspended between a photograph and a painted image where the painted image renders flesh and human curves poorly and the photo renders them exactly.

 

This gave me vertigo.

 

 

 

NUS Exotiques #5,” 2022, mixed-media photo collage

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Loaned by the artist to the Barnes Foundation in 2024. Photo by Richard Selden.

Taken from  images  in a French publication of the 1950s of that name, meaning ‘exotic nudes.’

 

 

 

Artists do not need to bear the weight of the history of their tribe(s) because this may distort their work and even crush them.

 

But this artist wants to celebrate something: the gaze of a Black woman at the beauty and sensual freedom of Black women.

 

Her paintings do not take me quite to this banquet.

 

 

song at midnight

Lucille Clifton, 1936-2010, American

published in Book of Light, 1993 (Copper Canyon Press)

 

won’t you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed

 

 

 

 

 

July 1981, rhinestones on dye sublimation prints, 2023

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Private loan to the Barnes Foundation in 2024.

 

 

 

I find the packaging of this artist’s work too flimsy to embrace and showcase this complicated (touchy) subject matter:

women and their sexuality and beauty and autonomy and joy from the point of view of a woman.  

 

 

In the real flesh, this is a matter for celebration. 

 

I do not find most of this artist’s works true to her own goals.

 

 

But I liked this very recent image for its muted tones; absence of the glitters; delicate sensuality; and thinning of the dissecting poles. 

 

Even if I could have done with fewer cushions!

 

 

 

Clarivel Face Forward Gazing, 2024, rhinestones, acrylic, and enamels on panel

Mickalene Thomas, American born 1971. Loaned by the artist to the Barnes Foundation in 2024.