Specifically engaged with the history of modernism, Thomas has created three new works for Figuring History, each of which focuses on empowered representations of Black women. Thomas is tapped by Dior to design a version of the Lady Dior handbag. Mickalene Thomas borrows the compositional format of Edouard Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863). “It’s something that had been percolating,” Thomas says, since she began cleaning out her mother’s house after her death in 2012. Thomas's painting Naomi Looking Forward sells at a London auction for $700,000, a career record. © Mickalene Thomas. “When we work with artists, the first thing we ask them is, ‘What is the dream you ­haven’t made happen,’ ” says Silvia Karman Cubiñá, the museum’s executive director and chief curator. There was a bar with hanging lights, and furniture covered in clashing vintage fabrics. “Most women don’t know they ever existed.” She has scanned some of her favorites and created her own collages. Every item on this page was chosen by a Town & Country editor. She uses them not simply as bling but rather as a 21st-century version of older techniques, such as the neo-impressionist painter Georges Seurat’s use of pointillism or the Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein’s Ben-Day dots, to create a delicate, often mosaic-like texture. She is inspired by a wide range of sources, from Hudson River School landscapes to Henri Matisse's nudes and Romare Bearden's collages. “I was reimagining a particular time in my childhood,” Thomas says. At the same time that she’s delivering a message about the beauty and the empowerment of black women, her compositions reveal an intimate knowledge of art history, inspired by such masters as Manet, Matisse, Ingres, Courbet, and Romare Bearden. I’m asking the museum to step out of its comfort zone. Slowly she began getting noticed. Thomas hopes it will also be a place of contemplation, with books for visitors to read and artworks to take in, some by her and some by other artists. Two years later she received a master’s in painting from the Yale School of Art and then moved to New York. Makeup by Amily Amick. While it could be argued that Thomas is constantly juggling high and low culture, she is also grappling with how to make her work, and art in general, as accessible as possible to audiences that may never have visited a museum before. Thomas works in painting, collage, photography, video, and large-scale installations. These shows were largely filled with canvases of beautiful black women—friends and lovers, women in images from once popular publications, sometimes even herself—that combined painting, photography, collage, and drawing. “Mickalene is one of the few artists,” he says, “who is able to walk into the ­commercial world without being commercial.”. “It was definitely a different time,” Thomas recalls. In this 23-minute documentary, Thomas commemorates the life of her late mother, a former fashion model, resilient woman, and the inspiration for Thomas' Mama Bush series. This collage, made a year prior to the painting of the same name, includes images of paintings by Monet and helps explain the title of the final painting. Increasingly, people beyond the art world seem to agree. (Today Thomas identifies as queer; her partner is Racquel Chevremont, an art adviser and former model who collaborates with Thomas on special projects.) Installation view, Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires, 2019, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans (photo by Alex Marks) According to a March 2019 study “Diversity of artists in … We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. The artist draws inspiration from art history and popular culture, so her imagery is as likely to reference nineteenth-century painting as blaxploitation films of the seventies. Back in the summer of 2013, while collectors were scouring the annual art fair in Basel, Switzerland, for hot trends and up-and-coming talents, Mickalene Thomas was holed up a few blocks away in a space stuck in the 1970s. Instead of two fully dressed men and the nude woman who appear in Manet’s painting, Thomas presents us with three self-assured black women who assertively consider us. It’s about building bridges and stepping onto the other side.”, Thomas says she plans to make periodic visits to Miami during the run of the show; while she’s there she hopes to tap into the city’s various communities. Thomas has recently begun using subjects taken from old publications; on a table in her studio is a bunch of Jet magazines. “It was meant as a statement about the impact and empower­ment of all women,” she says. Town & Country participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites. “She followed in a very determined, exploratory way her trajectory, establishing herself as one of the leading artists of her generation.” Soon after the PS1 exhibition she had gallery shows that were “back to back,” she says. What attracted Cubiñá and Leilani Lynch, a curator there, to Thomas’s work was the way she is able to create a special world. There are now Mickalene Thomas–designed handbags and a jacket, thanks to a recent collaboration with Dior. Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, African Art, Assistant Secretary for Communications and External Affairs, Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/vk7aa843d9a-6578-4724-acc6-686a16cbb746. Mickalene Thomas 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. Back in 2008 she became the first artist to use Michelle Obama as a subject, creating a print of the first lady that is today in the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, in Washington, DC. Today, in addition to having Thomas’s work hanging on your walls, it’s possible to wear her creations—she is one of an exclusive group of artists such as Alex Israel, Jenny Holzer, Richard Prince, and Yayoi Kusama who have lent their talents to commercial pursuits with fashion brands. “When I was growing up it was either this or Ebony,” she says, flipping through old issues. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's, International media Interoperability Framework. Then Thomas photographs them, creates a collages, and reworks the collage into acrylic on panel compositions to which she adds rhinestones. As she brings up plans for Better Nights on a computer screen, she goes on: “I’m interested in breaking some of those barriers down to allow the opportunity for different demographics to engage with my work.

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