Mickalene Thomas in Philadelphia
By • December 19, 2024 0 375
Is Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation an unlikely venue for an exhibition of paintings, photographs, installations and video by queer, Black, Brooklyn-based artist Mickalene Thomas?
Two reasons why not: Because the Barnes’s very wealthy, very crusty founder promoted Black culture and supported Black artists, writers and musicians; and because one of Thomas’s inspirations is the art of Henri Matisse, of which the Barnes holds 59 examples.
Not to mention that Thomas — who was also inspired by the work of Black women artists, especially painter and quilter Faith Ringgold, who died last April at age 93, and photographer and multimedia artist Carrie Mae Weems, 71 — was born, in 1971, across the Delaware River in Camden, New Jersey.
Thomas credits her decision to become an artist to a 1994 Weems retrospective at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, organized by and seen earlier at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Switching gears and coasts, she earned a BFA at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute and an MFA at Yale.
“Me as Muse,” 2016. Mickalene Thomas. Installation photo by Richard Selden.
Curated at the Barnes by Renée Mussai, “Mickalene Thomas: All About Love” takes its title from a 1999 book by Black feminist theorist bell hooks. Presented first at the Broad in Los Angeles, “All About Love” will pop over to London’s Hayward Gallery after closing in Philadelphia on Jan. 12, then open in Toulouse, France, in June.
A billboard-like image of Black American Folies Bergère star Josephine Baker — later a spy for the French Resistance and a civil rights activist — cheekily points to the exhibition’s entrance. “Noir est beau (Joséphine Baker 3)” is one of 13 textile portraits designed by Thomas and fabricated by a Mumbai embroidery shop for the Paris Fashion Week unveiling of Dior’s spring/summer 2023 couture collection.
The collection, by Dior Creative Director Maria Grazia Chiuri, was said to be an homage to Baker, who — as a boldly stylish Black woman, embraced by the LGBTQ community for her open bisexuality — suits “All About Love” to a T (as in Thomas).
Thomas-designed décor in several of the five galleries references the 1970s Africa-themed living rooms and dens she grew up in. Color photographs intermingle with her signature works: strikingly collaged, pattern-rich portraits (à la Matisse) in acrylic and enamel. Rhinestones flash out at the viewer, sometimes from the subjects’ teeth.
Nearly all are staged paintings of Black women — Thomas herself and what the text calls “her chorus of muses,” starting with her mother, Sandra Bush, a former fashion model who died in 2012.
In the first gallery, “Afro Goddesses,” are two photographs and four paintings, including the 2015 self-portrait “Afro Goddess Looking Forward,” in which the lounging but anxious-looking artist “wears” a black-and-white photo of eyes and eyebrows like a mask; and “Whatever You Want,” a 2004 portrait of her friend and ex-lover Maya, in panties and an open shirt, “reminiscent of Blaxploitation film heroines.”
Thomas’s spectacular 2010 reimagining of Édouard Manet’s “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass),” subtitled “Les trois femmes noires (The Three Black Women),” dominates the “Claiming the Canon” gallery. An upholstered bench and carpet designed by the artist are provided to take in this showily tongue-in-cheek appropriation.
Along with three more large paintings; the source photo for the 24-foot “Dejeuner”; and another playfully staged photo, “La Leçon d’amour (The Lesson of Love)” of 2008; this gallery contains “NUS Exotiques #5” of 2022, a beautifully simplified work, fractured like a Matisse cutout, of a nude woman and her reflection (or double or lover), drawing on imagery from a French publication of the 1950s of that name, meaning “exotic nudes.”
“Me as Muse,” a 12-screen video installation of 2016, flickers in a corner of the third gallery with images of Thomas’s nude body, paintings of women by men and depictions of Sarah Baartman, an Indigenous woman exploited in early 19th-century London as the “Hottentot Venus.” Singer and actress Eartha Kitt’s voice is heard, commenting on the racism that she faced.
Behind the grid of video screens is a black-and-white vinyl mural based on a 2012 collage by Thomas of Claude Monet’s water garden. The effect is frankly one of overload; it is difficult (even when one takes a seat on another custom bench) to form a coherent mental impression of these conflicting stimuli.
“NUS Exotiques #5,” 2022. Mickalene Thomas. Photo by Richard Selden.
Yet Thomas’s willingness to experiment is one of her strengths, as is her ability to work at large scale. (Not long ago, I saw and was thrilled by the tile mural commissioned from Thomas by the head of Yale’s Pauli Murray College for the 2017 building’s dining hall.)
Also in the “Me as Muse” gallery are a photograph and three paintings, notably “Mama Bush II, Keep the Home Fires Burnin’” of 2006, a rhinestone-enhanced, highly textured portrait — almost entirely in browns, beiges and whites, with a strip of forest green — of Thomas’s mother, seated, nude, on a sofa with a floral covering.
“Rooted in Desire” is the largest and most elaborately furnished gallery, featuring a spacious seating area (yes, you are allowed to make use of it); a wall of framed images, mostly photo portraits; an all-browns-and-grays triptych of a glamorous woman on one sidewall; two paintings of model and muse Clarivel on the other; and a collage-covered wall with a center opening leading to the last gallery.
Standout works on the collage-covered wall are examples of Thomas’s “Jet Blue” series of nudes from vintage Jet magazine calendars — layered, patchwork portraits that reveal the artist’s process (or pretend to) with notations in red such as, in “Jet Blue #26” of 2021, “eye + Lips rhinestone” and “Add Hair Lines.”
Finally, in the gallery titled “Exuberant Assemblages” are seven paintings. Most are in Thomas’s current, somewhat simplified style, also incorporating loose outlines. Exceptions: the Picasso-esque “Tête de Femme #6,” which adds glitter and Swarovski crystal to the familiar rhinestones; and a 2007 work from her “Brawlin’ Spitfire” series of entangled wrestlers, “It Hurts So Good!” As the label notes, though there are two bodies, one in zebra tights and one in tiger tights, there is “only one face: the artist’s own.”
Mickalene Thomas: All About Love
Through Jan. 12
The Barnes
2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia
215-278-7200
