Mickalene Thomas

Early life and education

Mickalene Thomas was born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1971, and raised by her mother Sandra "Mama Bush" Bush, who exposed Mickalene and her brother to art by enrolling them in after-school programs at the Newark Museum, and the Henry Street Settlement in New York. Thomas' mother raised her and her brother Buddhists. As a teenager, Mickalene and her mother had a very intimate and strenuous relationship due to her parents' addiction to drugs and Thomas dealing with her sexuality, which she documented in the short film Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman: A Portrait of My Mother.

Thomas lived and attended school in Portland, Oregon, from the mid-1980s to the early '90s, studying pre-law and Theater Arts. Thomas received her BFA from Pratt Institute in 2000 and her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2002. Thomas participated in a residency program at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York from 2000 to 2003 and also a residency in Giverny, France at the Versailles Foundation Munn Artists Program.

Artistic style and influences

During her early career she found herself immersed in the growing culture of DIY artists and musicians, leading her to start her own body of work. Most influential to her was Carrie Mae Weems show at the Portland Art Museum in 1994, showcasing a small retrospective of her photography, specifically photos from her Kitchen Table, and Ain’t Jokin series. In an interview with the Brooklyn Museum of Arts, Thomas described this experience with Weems’ work as “familiar” and “transformative,” as it addressed for her, questions about her own identity, sexuality, blackness and the dominant culture. Weems’ work not only played a role in Mickalene Thomas’ decision to switch studies and apply to Pratt Institute in New York, but to use her experience and turn it into art.

Her depictions of African-American women explore notions of black female celebrity and identity while romanticizing ideas of femininity and power. Reminiscent of '70s style blaxploitation, the subjects in Thomas's paintings and collages radiate sexuality. Women in provocative poses sprawl across the picture plane and are surrounded by decorative patterns inspired by her childhood as in Left Behind 2 Again from 2012, in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art. Her subjects are often well-known women like Eartha Kitt, Oprah Winfrey, and Condoleezza Rice. Her portrait of Michelle Obama was the first individual portrait done of the First Lady and was exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery's Americans Now show.

Thomas's website notes that she is best known for her elaborate paintings composed of rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel and that she presents a "complex vision of what it means to be a woman and expands common definitions of beauty." The many years that Thomas has spent studying art history, portrait painting, landscape painting, and still life has informed her work. Inspired by the Hudson River School, Édouard Manet, Henri Matisse, and Romare Bearden, she "explores notions of beauty from a contemporary perspective influenced by popular culture and pop art."

Film, music, and video art

In addition to her paintings, the Brooklyn-based Thomas works in the mediums of photography, collage, printmaking, video art, sculpture and installation art. Her works, in particular the Odalisque series (2007), have been interpreted as "investigating the artist-model relationship [...] but from an updated perspective of female inter-subjectivity and same-sex desire." (La Leçon d'amour, 2008) She has restaged themes and symbolism with a long lineage in Western art in her references to the odalisque representation of women in exotic settings. She experimented with institutional images in FBI/Serial Portraits (2008), based on mug shots of African-American women. In 2012, Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe, her first major solo museum exhibition, opened at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and traveled to the Brooklyn Museum. This show, the title of which references Gustave Courbet’s 1866 painting L’Origine du monde, showcased a series of recent portraits, landscapes and interiors.

Thomas has collaborated with musician Solange, creating the cover art for her 2013 EP True. The cover began as a portrait of Solange the artist herself commissioned. Thomas and Solange also collaborated on a trailer for the music video for the song "Losing You."

Her short film Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman, created for her exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, is about Sandra Bush, her mother and longtime muse. In it, Sandra talks about careers, relationships, beauty, and her fatal illness. The film made its television debut on HBO on February 24, 2014, and has run regularly since.

Recognitions and honors

Mickalene Thomas has been awarded multiple prizes and grants, including the BOMB Magazine Honor (2015), MoCADA Artistic Advocacy Award (2015), AICA-USA Best Show in a Commercial Space Nationally, First Place (2014), Anonymous Was A Woman Grant (2013), Audience Award: Favorite Short, Second Annual Black Star Film Festival (2013), Brooklyn Museum Asher B. Durand Award (2012), Timehri Award for Leadership in the Arts (2010), Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2009), Pratt Institute Alumni Achievement Award (2009) and Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2007).

Thomas has held residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, Maine (2013) (resident faculty); Versailles Foundation Munn Artists Program, Giverny, France (2011); Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Aspen, Colorado (2010); Studio Museum in Harlem (2003); Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont (2001); and Yale Norfolk Summer of Music and Art, Norfolk, Connecticut (1999).

Thomas is represented by Lehmann Maupin in New York; Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; Kavi Gupta in Chicago and Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Paris.

Collections

Mickalene Thomas’s work is held in many collections, including 21c Museum, Akron Art Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Baltimore Museum of Art, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Honolulu Museum of Art, International Center of Photography, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of Modern Art, National Portrait Gallery, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, New York Public Library, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Rubell Family Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Seattle Art Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, Taschen Collection, Mikki and Stanley Weithorn Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art, West Collection, and Yale University Art Gallery.

Solo exhibitions

Special projects

Screenings

Performances

Video Art