The Rise and Rise of Mickalene Thomas – TownandCountrymag.com

Back in the summer of 2013, while collectors were scouring the annual art fair in Basel, Switzerland, for hot trends and up-and-coming talents, Mickalene Thomas was holed up a few blocks away in a space stuck in the 1970s.

The walls were faux-wood-paneled, the floors a combination of linoleum, wood, and carpeting, the ceiling faux copper. There was a bar with hanging lights, and furniture covered in clashing vintage fabrics. On display were paintings and photographs by Thomas and some of her artist friends, including Wangechi Mutu, Xaviera Simmons, Lorna Simpson, Duron Jackson, and Derrick Adams. There was music playing, toohits of the period by black women such as Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer, and Diana Ross. Thomas called the installation Better Days.

I was reimagining a time in my childhood, thinking of leisure, black families, and black life.

It was but one of the immersive environments Thomas has become known forworks that have earned her a place in museums around the world and steadily increasing prices at auction. Better Days was inspired by parties her mother Sandra Bush, a former fashion model, threw with friends to raise funds for sickle cell anemia research. I was reimagining a particular time in my childhood, Thomas says. I was thinking of leisure, black families, and black life.

The installation was the talk of Art BaselSolange Knowles performed there, Simon de Pury DJd, and it became a refuge for a crowd usually resigned to conventional dealer dinners. And since it came fresh on the heels of a much praised exhibition of Thomass work at the Brooklyn Museum, Better Days helped cement the artist as a presence on the international art world stage.

Dana Scruggs

Six years later the excitement about Thomas has not diminished. As demand for her work keeps escalating, so do the number of her exhibitions, with shows over the last few years everywhere from Paris and Brussels to Houston, Aspen, and Baltimore. Her work is in the permanent collections of such institutions as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago, and it has been snapped up by such major collectors as Mera and Don Rubell. Thomas is part of a wave of black female artists, including Amy Sherald and Simone Leigh, who are, after years of being sidelined, having a moment and being recognized by curators, scholars, and gallerists.

In October a painting by Thomas of Naomi Campbell, Naomi Looking Forward (2013), sold at Sothebys for nearly four times its estimate, fetching $700,000. Ian Alteveer, a curator of modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, notes that Mickalenes work may be steeped in the history of painting and portraiture, yet there is an accessibility to everything she doesthe colors, the compositions, the glitter.

2008

Thomas creates this portrait of first lady Michelle Obama. Today it's in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

2012

A blockbuster Brooklyn Museum exhibition established Thomas as one of the leading artists of her generation.

2013

Solange Knowles performs at Better Days, an installation in Switzerland that makes Thomas the toast of the art world's jetset.

2018

Thomas is tapped by Dior to design a version of the Lady Dior handbag. The collaboration is so successful she creates a second bag (shown here, $16,000).

2019

Thomas's painting Naomi Looking Forward sells at a London auction for $700,000, a career record.

This month she will once again be the toast of Art Basel, this time in Florida, thanks to Better Nights, a project that takes Better Days and transforms it into a larger installation, one that will occupy several rooms at the Bass Museum of Art beginning December 1, during Art Basel Miami Beach, and running for nearly 10 months. Its something that had been percolating, Thomas says, since she began cleaning out her mothers house after her death in 2012. Better Nights was inspired by a Polaroid she found of her mother taken in a mirrored room in their New Jersey house. She is such a big part of my practice.

For officials at the Bass Museum, Better Nights is one of a series of artist commissions. When we work with artists, the first thing we ask them is, What is the dream you havent made happen, says Silvia Karman Cubi, the museums executive director and chief curator. What attracted Cubi and Leilani Lynch, a curator there, to Thomass work was the way she is able to create a special world. Its as if she wants us to step inside a painting, Lynch says

Born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1971, Thomas and her brother were raised as Buddhist vegetarians by their single mother. Creativity was encouraged, but Thomas didnt always want to be an artist.

In the early 1990s she moved to Portland, Oregon, in part to get away from her family as she came to terms with her sexuality. (Today Thomas identifies as queer; her partner is Racquel Chevremont, an art adviser and former model who collaborates with Thomas on special projects.) At Portland State University, Thomas started out studying prelaw and theater arts, but after spending time with artists she got back into making things.

That was in 1994. The following year she came east and earned a bachelors degree in painting from the Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn. Two years later she received a masters in painting from the Yale School of Art and then moved to New York. It was definitely a different time, Thomas recalls. There wasnt the banter of social media; you didnt communicate through texting. There was a network of young artistsKehinde Wiley, Derrick Adams, Shinique Smithwho would hang out together, go to each others openings, and share resources and support.

Even before Yale, she says, she was experimenting with figurative work, particularly self-portraits, but it was a performance art class with professor Kellie Jones and a photography course in graduate school that were life-changing. That was when she started photographing her mother and herself and transforming the images into collages and paintings. Slowly she began getting noticed. In 2005 Klaus Biesenbach, then the director of MoMA PS1 in Queens, included Thomas in Greater New York, a high-profile survey of up-and-coming artists that takes place every five years.

Early on, even as an emerging artist, Mickalene was formally very accomplished, say Biesenbach, now the director of MOCA in L.A., who would go on to invite her to create work for the windows at MoMAs restaurant. She followed in a very determined, exploratory way her trajectory, establishing herself as one of the leading artists of her generation. Soon after the PS1 exhibition she had gallery shows that were back to back, she says.

These shows were largely filled with canvases of beautiful black womenfriends and lovers, women in images from once popular publications, sometimes even herselfthat combined painting, photography, collage, and drawing. They are saturated with color, and many have wildly patterned backgrounds or surfaces that glitter with rhinestones or crystals. Thomas makes videos, tooof her mother and other musesand she even designed a label for a wine bottle.

Back in 2008 she became the first artist to use Michelle Obama as a subject, creating a print of the first lady that is today in the collection of the Smithsonians National Portrait Gallery, in Washington, DC. These shows were the beginning of the career I have today, she says. In fact, she adds unapologetically, I still feel like a rising star.

Increasingly, people beyond the art world seem to agree. Today, in addition to having Thomass work hanging on your walls, its possible to wear her creationsshe is one of an exclusive group of artists such as Alex Israel, Jenny Holzer, Richard Prince, and Yayoi Kusama who have lent their talents to commercial pursuits with fashion brands.

'Mickalene is one of the few artists able to walk into the commercial world without being commercial.'

There are now Mickalene Thomasdesigned handbags and a jacket, thanks to a recent collaboration with Dior. Last year, when the fashion house asked her to design a version of the Lady Dior handbag, Thomas crafted an arresting, colorful creation using a variety of materials and techniques, from sequins and beads to embroidery. I enjoyed thinking about collage in a three-dimensional way, she says.

Mark Guiducci, the editor of the art magazine Garage, which commissioned a recent collaboration between Thomas and Swarovski, notes that she has the ability to work across platforms without losing any of what makes her projects special. Mickalene is one of the few artists, he says, who is able to walk into the commercial world without being commercial.

Pascal Le SegretainGetty Images

In fact, her first Dior bag was such a success she was asked to create a second one, which was inspired by Monets gardens at Giverny. To go with the second bag, Thomas designed a shimmering metallic skirt and an updated edition of the classic Dior Bar Jacket that features embroidery, beading, and crocheted fabric on the sleeves and the back.

Mickalene managed to offer a new take on these forms with her unique artistic expression using bold colors, different textures, and daring decorations that speak of a tradition that is different from Diors, says Maria Grazia Chiuri, Diors creative director. Chiuri says that inviting Thomas to work with Dior broadens the horizon of what it means to be feminine in a global and international world.

When I paid a visit to her Brooklyn studio recently, Thomas, looking casual in skinny black pants, sneakers, and a baseball cap, showed off a group of collages stacked on a table that had been commissioned for Swarovski and used the companys crystals. There is a kind of duality evident in everything Thomas does.

While her paintings and collages are eye-popping and bold and seemingly effortless, on closer inspection they have an unexpected seriousness. At the same time that shes delivering a message about the beauty and the empowerment of black women, her compositions reveal an intimate knowledge of art history, inspired by such masters as Manet, Matisse, Ingres, Courbet, and Romare Bearden. Shes very rigorous about her work, says Ian Alteveer, the Met curator. Its seductive while at the same time it is meant to reference the street, the city, fashion, and memory.

Sometimes her references are subtle; sometimes theyre amusingly obvious. Thomas once recreated Manets famous painting Djeuner sur lHerbe, replacing the two white men and the naked white woman with three glamorous African-American women. It was meant as a statement about the impact and empowerment of all women, she says. Even her use of rhinestones and crystals has a historical precedent. She uses them not simply as bling but rather as a 21st-century version of older techniques, such as the neo-impressionist painter Georges Seurats use of pointillism or the Pop artist Roy Lichtensteins Ben-Day dots, to create a delicate, often mosaic-like texture.

Thomas has recently begun using subjects taken from old publications; on a table in her studio is a bunch of Jet magazines. When I was growing up it was either this or Ebony, she says, flipping through old issues. On a trip to New Orleans she happened on some old Jet calendars that featured stunning seminude photographs of black beauties-of-the-month. Im not sure, but I believe they were given out to their top subscribersor perhaps male subscribers, she says. Most women dont know they ever existed. She has scanned some of her favorites and created her own collages. Im recontextualizing them and making them my own, she says.

Dana Scruggs

While it could be argued that Thomas is constantly juggling high and low culture, she is also grappling with how to make her work, and art in general, as accessible as possible to audiences that may never have visited a museum before. Her immersive environments are one way she is trying to accomplish this.

Better Nights, for instance, will be made up of a series of rooms, some faux-wood-paneled and others mirrored so viewers can see themselves and become part of the installation. This will be the first time when it is a complete immersive experience, with mirrors throughout the main performative space, Thomas says. She has been collecting vintage fabrics to upholster the furniture, which will be in classic shapes from the 1970s. And, as with Better Days, there will be a bar and plenty of space to participate in one of the programs or simply lounge around.

'It's about inclusivitymaking everyday people feel comfortable coming through the door.'

Thomas hopes it will also be a place of contemplation, with books for visitors to read and artworks to take in, some by her and some by other artists. She is also working diligently with museum officials on the programming for the space; the performances will feature live music, poetry readings, and dance, along with educational offerings and local talentall conceived to attract Miamis diverse community.

Art is still very much about this elitist way of thinking and being, Thomas says, perched on a couch in her studio. As she brings up plans for Better Nights on a computer screen, she goes on: Im interested in breaking some of those barriers down to allow the opportunity for different demographics to engage with my work. Im asking the museum to step out of its comfort zone. Its about building bridges and stepping onto the other side.

Thomas says she plans to make periodic visits to Miami during the run of the show; while shes there she hopes to tap into the citys various communities. Its about connecting with people, she says. Weve gotten so far away from our roots, from the idea of museums being our cultural leaders, havens for the community, that its our mission to bring that back. Its about inclusivitymaking everyday people feel comfortable coming through the door.

In this story, hair by Nai'vasha at the Wall Group. Makeup by Amily Amick.

This story appears in the December 2019/January 2020 issue of Town & Country.SUBSCRIBE NOW

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The Rise and Rise of Mickalene Thomas - TownandCountrymag.com