Crystal ViSionS With rhinestone-encrusted black women, tricked-out settings and art historical reworkings, Mickalene Thomas has created a signature, if controversial, style. BY Sarah Valdez With an abundance of foxy, dark-skinned women, mod- ernist interiors, lush landscapes and patterned textiles rendered mainly in paint and rhinestones, Mickalene thomas’s first solo museum exhibition, the traveling “origin of the universe,” made an alluring debut at the Santa Monica Museum of art this summer. former deputy director Lisa Melandri organized its presentation there, where it included only new work: 15 paintings, a photo- graph and an installation. the exhibition is now at the brooklyn Museum in appreciably expanded form, as a midcareer survey, curated by eugenie tsai, comprising some 100 paintings, collag- es, photographs, videos and installations from the past decade. the striking quality of thomas’s paintings has to do not least with the sparkly, light-refracting nature of their rhinestone-covered surfac- es. the artist—who was born in 1971 in camden, n.J., and is now based in new york—applies the stones pointillistically in dynamic, unexpected color schemes, amid painted and collaged elements of various textures. Much of the work is large-scale and displays a tension between the ornamental and the monumental. her best- known pieces depict sexualized, self-possessed african-american women posing vampishly in 1970s-style environments and clothes. the notion of consumer desire is hardly lost on thomas, whose compositions often have the feel of magazine layouts, replete with attractive models and staged interiors. in fact, her early work appropriated imagery from actual magazines: the pornographic Black Tail and the comparatively buttoned-down Ebony, both ori- ented toward african-americans. these days, however, thomas bases her compositions on her own photographs, some of which she also exhibits as straight c-prints. though stylish, the prints lack both the luster and complexity of the mixed-medium pieces. Mickalene Thomas: A Little Taste Outside of Love, 2007, acrylic, enamel and rhinestones on panel, Currently On View 108 by 144 inches. Brooklyn Museum. Images this “Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the article courtesy Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, Universe” at the Brooklyn Museum, N.Y., and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. through Jan. 20, 2013. 114 art in ameriCa oCtoBer’12 oCtoBer’12 art in ameriCa 115 Evoking both ’70S dEcOr and Cubism, Thomas uses wood paneling as A motif in hEr wOrk, ThE Grain serving in optically pleasing contrast to ThE sparkle. in Qusuquzah Standing Sideways (2012), the lone photograph in the Santa Monica presentation and one of 13 included in brooklyn, thomas’s subject appears in a funky get-up consist- ing of an off-the-shoulder, short-sleeved paisley jumpsuit; wide, red-velvet belt; thick necklace; and gold, sequined beret, per- haps a flashy take on the iconic black Panther headgear. She meets the viewer’s gaze directly, hand on hip and foot planted on a piece of furniture cut off by the frame. behind her is a wall of wood paneling, a material that thomas—evoking not just ’70s decor but also cubism—uses as a motif in her paintings as well, the grain serving in optically pleasing contrast to the sparkle. in “origin,” Qusuquzah also appears in rhinestone paintings around 8 feet high and 7 feet wide, as does another model, din. (Santa Monica featured three portraits of Qusuquzah and two of din; brooklyn has these plus an additional portrait of Qusuquzah.) each work is titled with the subject’s name, followed by Une Très Belle Négresse (a very beautiful black woman), a reference to Manet, who in 1862 painted a woman he described in his journal as “Laure, une très belle négresse.” Set against floral backgrounds in beiges and pastels, the women pose assertively and invite admiration; the large scale implies their importance. each subject is styled in the same clothes and makeup in her multiple paintings. Qusuquzah’s turquoise Sunday-best hat echoes her eye makeup and fea- tures a fishnet veil—an impressive latticework composed of rhinestones. din sports a sizable afro, purple eye shadow, blue lipstick and a big silver necklace. Qusuquzah’s and din’s confident bearings and unabashed adornment seem at odds, to say the least, with the impassive Qusuquzah Standing Sideways, 2012, appearance of the anonymous subject in the courbet paint- c-print, 60 by 48 inches. ing after which the exhibition is titled. courbet’s famous oil- on-canvas beaver shot, L’Origine du monde (1866), depicts a vulva, splayed legs, a torso and a breast, leaving out iden- tifying characteristics that might convey a personality, such lation involved viewing by peephole. first, you encountered a as a face, or body parts capable of action, like arms or feet: tangerine-orange door with gold trim set into a gallery wall. the pussy as mysterious, powerful void, front and center. the eponymous funk tune by Roy ayers could be heard playing, “origin” exhibition contains new bejeweled takes on courbet’s seemingly from behind the door. Looking through the peep- painting—one, as the viewer learns from the catalogue, with hole, you saw a furnished room with nobody in sight, and it was thomas herself as the model; another with her partner, artist unclear whether the space was in fact a space or merely a two- carmen McLeod. Like duchamp’s Étant donnés (1946-66)— dimensional illusion. (during the exhibition opening, however, a which trumps courbet’s Origine with a scene of a splayed, live model lounged about inside, precluding this appealing ambi- naked woman even paler and more lifeless-looking than her guity.) the room was decorated in thomas’s retro esthetic, with predecessor, and which, installed permanently at the Phila- a wood-paneled wall hung with a third Origine-inspired painting delphia Museum of art, is viewed through a pair of peep- and vinyl records propped up on the floor: a conspicuous display holes—thomas’s renderings raise the unsettling, and time- of cool. the door, though, wouldn’t open. if thomas succeeded, worn, question of whether or not courbet’s supine nude might you wanted to go in or at least see more. but you couldn’t. be dead and/or have been raped. encrusting the figure in in an interview with Melandri in the exhibition catalogue, rhinestones hardly prevents such a reading, and in fact might thomas insists that her flashy artistic style is more complicat- make the body appear only more inanimate. and depicting a ed than bling.1 She claims that she means to interrogate the possibly violated or deceased female in such festive decora- nature of artifice and beauty, how self-presentation occurs tive trimmings offers at best a confusing message. through costume and pretense. it’s very easy, however, to thomas referenced duchamp’s Étant donnés directly in the find thomas’s big, glimmering artworks guilty of the same installation “take all the time you need” (2012), featured in Santa ostentation they apparently scrutinize. Qusuquzah, Une Très Belle Monica. (it doesn’t appear in the brooklyn presentation, which her most iconic and publicly viewed painting to date, shown Négresse #3, 2012, rhinestones, instead includes four installations created specially for the show: in the brooklyn iteration of “origin” but not in Santa Monica, acrylic, oil and enamel on panel, domestic interiors similar to the backdrops used for thomas’s is the three-panel Le déjeuner sur l’herbe: Les Trois Femmes 96 by 80 inches. paintings and photographs.) Like duchamp’s tableau, the instal- Noires (2010). commissioned by the Museum of Modern art, 116 art in ameriCa oCtoBer’12 oCtoBer’12 art in ameriCa 117 LIkE dUchamp’S ÉtanT dOnnÉs, Thomas’S installation TAke All The Time YOu need involved viewing by peephole. new york, for the street-level window of its 53rd Street restaurant, the Modern, the work replaces the three main figures in the famous 1863 Manet with fashionable black women. With its immense scale and glittering surface, the piece is decidedly showier than its namesake. it also calls to mind artist delia brown’s cordoned-off, staged parties or ongoing “Guerrilla Lounging” project, for which she and several friends invade collectors’ homes (with permis- sion) in order to kick back for photographs that she later paints, usually in watercolor, capturing fantasies of the high life. for Le déjeuner, thomas used friends as models, posing them in the sculpture garden at MoMa one summer evening. the painted scene appears impossibly fabulous, and for two years (from feb- ruary 2010 to March 2012, after a large photographic version of the composition was exhibited in the window for the year before) served as window dressing for the upscale restaurant. thoMaS’S neaR-conStant fixation on female beauty can be monotonous, and her reason for revisiting well-known artworks of the past remains unclear. even so, her showpiece A Little Taste Outside of Love (2007) thrills. this 9-by-12-foot image of an african-american odalisque, in rhinestones, acrylic and enamel on wood, is usually seen sparkling triumphantly at the entrance to the contemporary wing of the brooklyn Museum and appears in only that museum’s edition of “origin.” Riffing on ingres’s Grande Odalisque (1814), the painting portrays a this spread, two views of Take All the nude black woman with a big afro reclining on an array of art- Time You Need, mixed-medium installation, fully mismatched patterned fabrics—floral, zebra, panther—set at the Santa Monica Museum of art. against a golden ground. the comely concubine appears more Photo Monica orozco. decorative and arguably more majestic than ingres’s. 118 art in ameriCa oCtoBer’12 oCtoBer’12 art in ameriCa 119 Weird and spellbinding, Sleep: deux Femmes Noires is by fAr ThE most intimate and revelatorY piecE on view.