Research Catalog

Title

Mickalene Thomas : origin of the universe / edited by Lisa Melandri.

Author

Thomas, Mickalene, 1971-

Publication

Santa Monica, Calif. : Santa Monica Museum of Art, [2012]

Supplementary Content

• Museum exhibition website
• Exhibition website
• Gallery website

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Melandri, Lisa
• Santa Monica Museum of Art, host institution.
• Brooklyn Museum of Art, host institution.

Description

76 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), portraits; 29 cm

Summary

Mickalene Thomas (born 1971) has won acclaim for her elaborate, colorful paintings of African-American women, often posed provocatively against rich, 1970s-themed backgrounds adorned with rhinestones, enamel and acrylics. Thomas draws from earlier traditions of portraiture to arrive at her contemporary sensibility. She engages with the tension between a personal investigation of eroticism, black femininity and beauty and a pop-cultural critique of the overt sexual imagery prevalent in the media--from Blaxploitation film heroines like Cleopatra Jones to the construction of middle-class, African-American taste in Ebony magazine. Her portraits of trans-generational female empowerment have been receiving attention far beyond the standard art-world venues and have been reproduced everywhere from The New Yorker to Bomb magazine. Thomas also reenvisions landscapes and interiors through playful and passionate recontextualizations of such artists as Romare Bearden, Édouard Manet, Henri Matisse and Balthus. Mickalene Thomas: The Origin of the Universe is the first monograph on the artist, and accompanies her first solo museum exhibition in the United States at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. It features a wide array of full-color reproductions of her work across media--much of it new and never before published--including photo collages and provocative landscapes, along with an interview with the artist and critical texts that elucidate her paintings' investigations of femininity, sexuality and power, and provide extensive context for her oeuvre as a whole.

Alternative Title

Origin of the universe

Subject

• Thomas, Mickalene, 1971- > Exhibitions
• Thomas, Mickalene, 1971-
• 2000-2099
• African American painters > 21st century > Exhibitions
• African American artists > 21st century > Exhibitions
• African American art > 21st century > Exhibitions
• Painting, American > 21st century > Exhibitions
• Photography, Artistic > 21st century > Exhibitions
• African American art
• African American artists
• African American painters
• Painting, American
• Photography, Artistic

Genre/Form

Exhibition catalogs.

Note

• Catalog of the exhibition of the same name held at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, April 14-Aug. 19, 2012 and subsequently at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Sept. 27, 2012-Jan. 20, 2013.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Contents

Introduction / Elsa Longhauser -- Foreword / Arnold L. Lehman -- Acknowledgments / Lisa Melandri -- Mickalene Thomas on beauty / Sarah Lewis -- The anterior as muse: recent paintings by Mickalene Thomas / Denise Murrell -- Points of origin: an interview with Mickalene Thomas / by Lisa Melandri -- Plates.

Call Number

Sc+ F 13-35

ISBN

• 9780983967200
• 0983967202

OCLC

772106335

Author

Thomas, Mickalene, 1971- artist.

Title

Mickalene Thomas : origin of the universe / edited by Lisa Melandri.

Publisher

Santa Monica, Calif. : Santa Monica Museum of Art, [2012]

Type of Content

text

still image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references.

Connect to:

Museum exhibition website

Exhibition website

Gallery website

Chronological Term

2000-2099

Local Subject

Black author.

Added Author

Melandri, Lisa, editor.

Santa Monica Museum of Art, host institution.

Brooklyn Museum of Art, host institution.

Research Call Number

Sc+ F 13-35