The first comprehensive monograph on Mickalene Thomas, a key figure in 21st-century contemporary art Over the past two decades, Mickalene Thomas's critically acclaimed and extensive body of work has spanned painting, collage, photography, video, and the immersive installations that have become her signature. With influences ranging from nineteenth-century painting to popular culture, Thomas's art articulates a complex and empowering vision of aspiration and self-image through gender and race while expanding on and subverting common definitions of beauty, sexuality, and celebrity. This book, made in close collaboration with Thomas, is the first to survey the breadth of her extraordinary career. Publication coincides with the opening of Mickalene Thomas's first global exhibition, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, at Levy Gorvy galleries in New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris.

A close look at a new installation by renowned contemporary artist Mickalene Thomas that marks the first time she has engaged with early American history   Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971) has gained an international reputation for her dazzling portraits of Black women, as well as her large-scale installations that physically enfold viewers into lushly decorated, 1970s-inspired domestic interiors. This volume offers a window into Thomas’s unique, multifaceted approach and introduces a new living room–style installation by the artist, in which she creates, for the first time, a homelike environment reminiscent of the pre-abolition era. In addition to period-specific textile patterns and other decorative elements, her installation incorporates a selection of small-scale, early American portraits of Black women, men, and children—from miniatures and daguerreotypes to silhouettes on paper and engravings in books—as well as a group of works by Thomas and other contemporary artists in a wide range of media. The book’s essays examine both how Thomas’s engagement with early American history opens up previously unexplored and fertile ground for her artistic practice and how this project constructs evocative spaces (both physically and textually) in which the lives of early nineteenth-century Black Americans can be recognized on their own terms. With an artist’s statement and extensive photography that captures details of the installation, this presentation documents an exciting direction for one of today’s most acclaimed artists.   Distributed for the Yale University Art Gallery   Exhibition Schedule   Yale University Art Gallery (September 8, 2023–January 7, 2024)

Mickalene Thomas, known for her large-scale, multi-textured, and rhinestone-encrusted paintings of domestic interiors and portraits, has also identified the photographic image as a defining touchstone for her practice. Thomas first began to photograph herself and her mother as a student at Yale-a pivotal experience for her as an artist. While working across multiple series, much of her photographic work functions as a personal act of deconstruction and reappropriation-both of images she has created herself and images she has singled out as influence. With each series, she grapples with and asserts new definitions of beauty and inspiration. Thomas's portraits draw equally from 1970s black-is-beautiful images of women such as supermodel Beverly Johnson and actress Vonetta McGee; Edouard Manet's odalisque figures; and the mise-en-scene studio portraiture of James Van Der Zee and Malick Sidibe, to mention a few. Perhaps of greatest importance, however, this collection of portraits and staged scenes reflects a very personal community of inspiration as well-a collection of muses that includes herself, her mother, and her friends and lovers, emphasizing the communal and social aspects of art-making and creativity that pervade her work. This volume is the first to gather together her various approaches to photography, including portraits, collages, Polaroids, and other processes, and will be the foundation for a major traveling exhibition of the work to launch in 2015.