Mickalene Thomas: All about Love
A major monograph chronicling Thomas' vibrant, rhinestone-adorned paintings
New York-based artist Mickalene Thomas' critically acclaimed and extensive body of work spans painting, collage, print, photography, video and immersive installations. With influences ranging from 19th-century painting to popular culture, Thomas' art articulates a complex and empowering vision of womanhood while expanding on and upending common definitions of beauty, sexuality, celebrity and politics. This major publication further affirms Thomas' status as a key figure of contemporary art. It features notable works that are arranged in thematic chapters throughout the book.
The book also features an interview with the artist by Rachel Thomas, and is followed by essays from Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Darnell L. Moore, Claudia Rankine, Ed Schad, Renée Mussai and Christine Y. Kim, which cover her distinct visual vocabulary, drawing on themes of intergenerational female empowerment, autobiography, memory and tenets of Black feminist theory. In particular, they explore how Thomas subverts art history to reclaim the notions of repose, rest and leisure in works that celebrate self-expression and joy. For the artist, repose is a radical act, pointing to "what is able to happen once you have the agency."
Mickalene Thomas (born 1971) is an international, award-winning, multidisciplinary artist whose work has yielded instantly recognizable and widely celebrated aesthetic languages within contemporary visual culture. She is known for her elaborate portraits of Black women composed of rhinestones, acrylic and enamel.
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Thomas places her art at the center of a conversation between sexuality, erotica, and memory. She asks complex questions about identity, digs into family history, and at times becomes the subject of her own work.--Larisha Paul "Rolling Stone"
She moves a muse from making them feel comfortable in an environment into a photograph, into a collage, into a painting. And now, with recent works into a variety of mediums, whether silkscreen or dye sublimation print or neon or sculpture, it's a matter of renewed engagement, renewed looking at people she cares deeply about.--Ed Schad "Juxtapoz"
Thomas has been depicting Black women at their best-glamourous, assured, sexy-for 20 years, artworks now found hanging alongside those of the white women which have always occupied America's most prestigious art museums.--Chadd Scott "Forbes: Media"
Thomas reimagines our broken world restored by love, color, and sequence...From broken down barriers and shattered expectations, she reconstitutes a new reality where, in hooks's words, 'love's sacred presence can be felt everywhere.'--Tara Dalbow "W Magazine"
I admire how, not only pose, but also materials come into play in her works as adorning elements - when I look at her works, in whatever medium they were made, words such as celebration, beauty, pleasure come to mind.--Elisa Medde "British Journal of Photography"
A constant source of surprise and delight.--Geoff Montes "Galerie"
The [works'] sheer physicality, and the powerful self-possession of the subject, challenge the viewer to engage with the Black woman who stands boldly in front of her domestic environment.--Hannah Silver "Wallpaper*"
