Wexner Center for the Arts School Programs Resources Mickalene Thomas. Portrait of Racquel #1 with Thick Skin, 2016. Rhinestones, acrylic, and oil on wood panel. 48 x 36 in. Collection of Marilyn and Larry Fields. © Mickalene Thomas / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York You can’t believe in yourself if you can’t see yourself in images. That’s why I make what I make. It’s about me waiting to see myself and claim spaces that have been void for so long. Present images so that when little girls go to museums they can look up and see themselves. I am here. --Mickalene Thomas Mickalene Thomas: I Can’t See You Without Me September 13 – December 30, 2018 1 On Mickalene Thomas: Photo: © Lyndsy Welgos “Representation is important. Figurative art is important. You can’t believe in yourself if you can’t see yourself in images. That’s why I make what I make. It’s about me waiting to see myself and claim spaces that have been void for so long. Present images so that when little girls go to museums they can look up and see themselves. I am here. I am Mickalene Thomas.” -Acceptance speech at 2018 New York Academy of Art Tribeca Ball, Vogue • Her Website: http://mickalenethomas.com/ • Her CV • Overview: Mickalene Thomas lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She makes paintings, collages, photography, video, and installations that draw on art history and popular culture to create a contemporary vision of female sexuality, beauty, and power. Blurring the distinction between object and subject, concrete and abstract, real and imaginary, Thomas constructs complex portraits, landscapes, and interiors in order to examine how identity, gender, and sense-of-self are informed by the ways women (and “feminine” spaces) are represented in art and popular culture. • Education: o B.F.A. from the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY in 2000 o M.F.A. from Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT in 2002 2 • Awards: o USA Francie Bishop Good & David Horvitz Fellow (2015) o Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2013) o Brooklyn Museum Asher B. Durand Award (2012) o Timerhi Award for Leadership in the Arts (2010). Resources on Thomas: “Miraculous Muse” Interview with Ronald Sosinki: Sosinki interviewed Thomas in Jan. 2018 when she was finishing work for the show at the Seattle Art Museum, Figuring History. It wonderfully discusses some of her muses, her various techniques, including her film work, and how her work is a form of performance. “Mickalene Thomas” by Sean Landers, Bomb 2011 Interview: Interview by one of her Yale professors on participating in programs in New Jersey museums as a child, to her museum internship and canonical art influences, like Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe. Addresses “womanism” vs. feminism and the gaze and the gazer in her work. “Mickalene Thomas Delivers the Most Stylish Philosophy Lesson of All Time” She took art historical artworks on women by men head on in past exhibitions, such as abstraction Courbet’s Origin of the Universe, and Picasso’s “Tête de Femme.” “The Multiple Media and Modes of Visibility of Mickalene Thomas” ArtPulse Mag This interview, born from the exhibition, More than Everything, deals with the artist’s process and influences on her work. Videos on Thomas: Shortly before Mickalene Thomas's first major museum show "Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe" opened at the Brooklyn Museum, ARTINFO visited her studio in Brooklyn, New York. Thomas talks about how her mother influenced her work and the various sources of her signature fragmented style (5:35 mins). Lecture at Boston U in March 23, 2015 on how she challenges ideas of race, gender, and beauty (1 hr 19 mins). Commentary on Hair Piece #20 by Deputy Director of Education and Public Programs and current Chairman of Education at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, on Thomas’ revising art history (2:05). Interview (21 mins) in which she discusses her trajectory, collages and how they’ve developped, portraits, and the influence of her mother, beauty and sexuality, pop culture and Pop Art as well as on her technique. NYC-based artist Mickalene Thomas reflects on her 20s and the art therapy retreat that changed the course of her career path entirely. Here, she discusses swapping out her law student plans for the art world (4:37). 3 ON THE EXHIBITION: Mickalene Thomas. Qusuquzah Lounging with Pink & Black Flower, 2016. Rhinestones, acrylic, and oil on wood panel. 96 x 120 in.Private collection. © Mickalene Thomas / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York • WHAT: 30 works that include: o paintings (with rhinestones, and collages) o site-specific murals o videos o a new multichannel video work o immersive installations o all work produced between 2005-2018 • GOALS: o To explore the intricacies of her visual dialogue with art history, identity, desire, power, authorship, pop culture, and the historically fraught relationship between artist and subject. o By casting herself, her mother, and other formidable women in her life as her models and muses, the artist pushes the boundaries of beauty as defined in the canon of art history. • LAYOUT AND TOPICS: o 4 galleries o each gallery dedicated to one of Thomas’s significant and sustained muses: her late mother, Sandra; her former lover, Maya; her current partner, Racquel; and Thomas herself. 4 • MATERIALS: The works in the exhibition will feature her signature rhinestones, painted patterns, collaged compositions, and appropriated source imagery— materials she has used to challenge presumptions about perception, authenticity, and beauty. • IN HER OWN WORDS: “By portraying real women with their own unique history, beauty and background, I’m working to diversify the representations of black women in art. Around the time I started taking photographs in the early 2000s, the reductive media stereotypes of young, black, female bodies were already pervasive. Women like Mary J. Blige, Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown were at the forefront of pop culture and still limited to depicting themselves as objects of desire. I wanted to contemplate and challenge these stereotypes through my work, as it was crucial for me to flip these ideas by making images of women who were not, for example, a ‘Foxy Brown’ but also weren’t in line with the marginalizing narrative of female subjects in Western art history. This wasn’t meant as a political statement, but I was conscious of the fact that the diversity of black women was not represented in the media or art.” • Wexner site Mickalene Thomas. Racquel Reclining Wearing Purple Jumpsuit, 2015. Rhinestones, glitter, flock, acrylic, and oil on wood panel. 96 x 144 in. The Rachel and Jean-Pierre Lehmann Collection. © Mickalene Thomas / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York 5 Resources on Exhibition: “Mickalene Thomas’ World Making” by Nicole R. Fleetwood, from exhibition catalog (please do not distribute) Fleetwood nicely analyzes particular artworks, including I Can’t See Without You, and As If you Read My Mind. “Mama as Muse” by Antwaun Sargent, from exhibition catalog (please do not distribute) Focuses on her mother as 1 of her muses, and how Thomas considered the work of musicians and artists – both canonical and contemporary, in creating portraits of “Mama Bush.” “Mickalene Thomas on Muses, Models, and Mentors” Though this article/ interview is about a past exhibition, the content relates to this exhibition, especially since she considers how we see ourselves in others in relationships between women, and on black womanhood and feminism. Resources from recent Exhibitions: “A Room of One’s Own” by Jacqueline Francis This essay was written for the catalog of the exhibition, Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas, held at the Seattle Art Museum in spring of 2018. It compares the works of the artists and well describes Thomas’ style and her relationship with art history. Tête à Tête and Interview by Carrie Mae Weems in 2015 Muse Catalog: Weems brings up poignant discussion points, like the differences between photographing herself and others, how she portrays sexuality, the role of glamour in her work, how she’s turned art history on its head (vs. just inserting the black body into it), and if a man could have done her work. Mickalene Thomas. Portrait of Madame Mama Bush #2, 2010. Rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel on wood panel. 84 x 108 in. Collection of Dale and Richard Newberg © Mickalene Thomas / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York 6 THEMES: • woman as object, subject, or muse • black woman as object, subject, and muse • representation of women in Western art history • muses in art history • identity, gender, and sense of self constructed by (pop) culture • how we perceive and construct others’ identity • queer identity • desire • power • authorship and authority • relationship between artist and subject • art history and pop culture • beauty • race • identity and representation • femininity • “womanism” vs. feminism (see Landers and Muses, Mentors interviews, for ex.) • sexuality and female sexuality Mickalene Thomas. Mama Bush (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher, 2009. Rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel on wood panel. 82 x 72 in. Private collection © Mickalene Thomas / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York 7 VOCABULARY: cis-gendered denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex collage coming from the French and meaning “to glue,” this art form and technique, incorporates the use of pre-existing materials or objects attached as part of a two-dimensional surface installation a work of art that usually consists of multiple components often in mixed media and that is exhibited in a usually large space in an arrangement specified by the artist lesbian a woman with same-sex attraction muse a person or personified force who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist muse in art history Modern artists have used muses to depict women as sexualized objects.