Mickalene Thomas is a contemporary African American Artist best known for her elaborate collages and paintings of similar style, she uses scraps of magazines and rhinestones to embellish her work. Her depictions of African American women explores both her relationship to her femininity as a black woman but also empowering black women in a broader social setting.
Thomas references classical portraiture and borrows scenes from popular culture – Combining traditional genres with African American women combatting the Eurocentric view large amounts of art and history has had placing Black women in the spotlight.
“Positioning black women — artists, actresses, characters, and her own family — as mentors and muses, and as heroic figures in a lineage of their own, Thomas overrides oppressive narratives.” 1
She takes ques from artists such as Manet, Gustave Courbet and Henri Matisse. Often directly pulling poses from their works. “She models her figures on the classical poses and abstract settings popularized by these modern artists as a way to reclaim agency for women who have been represented as objects to be desired or subjugated.“
Much of her work is a criticism and rejection to the male gaze specifically the over-sexualisation and miss representation of Black women and culture in art. Her subjects often look directly at the viewer challenging the dominant male gaze in art. This more assertive posing of her models shows a confidence in their skin and bodies which is essential to her combatting the ideas of typically gentle and submissive portrayals of women.
She creates elaborate mixed media paintings often incorporating Acrylic, Rhinestones and enamel. She often uses Collage to obscure bodies of her models and rebuild them into new settings. She uses bright block colours as a result of her collage he models are often dressed in bright outfits reminiscent of the 1970’s – she often does this in reference to her childhood growing up in the 70s. Thomas mentions being inspired by the work of contemporary artist Romare Bearden known for his abstract brightly coloured oil paintings. she also sights much of her inspiration coming from movements such as dada and cubism.
A good example of Thomas’s process is her 2010 works ‘Le déjeuner sur l’herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires‘ (The Luncheon on the Grass: The Three Black Women) based of off Manets ‘Le déjeuner sur l’herbe‘ – This painting caused intense controversy when first completed depicting two nude women with two fully clothed men – Thomas now responds to this painting to challenge to notion of the male gaze all her figures are fully clothed looking to wards the viewer giving them agency and personality when compared to the female figures of Manets work. The ‘Le déjeuner sur l’herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires‘ went through 3 stages before becoming the fully complete painting.
Thomas started by photographing her models in the MoMA sculpture garden, in poses reminiscent of Manets work.
She then created multiple versions of the same collage with differing materials.
The final painting is 10 x 24 ft based of the original photo but painted on wooden panels with oil, acrylic and enamel. Thomas has stated that she chose the large size to “take up space” in traditionally white male dominated spaces.
I would like to incorporate Thomas’s style of collage into my work as I am drawn to her use of texture in her work and her ability to create entirely new images from scratch.
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- Byrd, Rikki (November 27, 2017). Hyperallergic ↩︎