Mickalene Thomas’s New Survey at the Grand Palais Is for Lovers
Two years after Mickalene Thomas’s first visit to Paris in 2009, she returned for a residency at Giverny, the well-known home and garden of Claude Monet, where she was deeply drawn to the interior and exterior worlds he created. Now, with her solo exhibition “All About Love,” at the Grand Palais, visitors can experience her own worlds transposed into immersive spaces filled with furniture, stacks of books and Jet magazines, arrangements of potted plants, and still-life vignettes in which every object is painted a deep brown.
Chief curator Rachel Thomas, along with Laure Gricourt and Erin Jenoa Gilbert, has accomplished an utterly captivating survey of Thomas’s work, which, before touching down at the Grand Palais, made highly praised stops at the Broad in Los Angeles, the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, the Hayward Gallery in London, and Les Abattoirs in Toulouse. The lush domestic tableaux exist among monumental artworks, multi-channel videos, and in-depth preparatory designs, with the show’s nearly 80 works staged throughout a newly reopened gallery spanning two voluminous levels. Most of the space is dimly lit, with spotlights that accentuate Thomas’s signature strass ornamentation—liberally applied not only to the outlines of her Black female figures, but also to their ruby-red lips, lustrous hair, the lines between their toes, and the surrounding decorative patterns. Many of the collage paintings on display also reimagine and subvert depictions of women that ripple through art history: buttocks by Boucher, Ingres’s Grande Odalisque, Courbet’s lovers, and Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass, with nods to Warhol and Wesselmann along the way.
When the artist and I meet, she is wearing a denim suit by Romeo Hunte (she wore Dior, with whom she has collaborated on set designs and the Lady Dior bag, to the opening dinner). Directly after we speak, she’s due to join a Zoom call with MFA students at Columbia. For Thomas, can take many forms—from representing the people closest to her as soulful goddesses to encouraging next-generation artists to seek out and express what moves them.
Vogue: As we’re sitting here, Eartha Kitt’s “Paint Me Black Angels (Angelitos Negros)” is on repeat, with lyrics like, “How come you don’t paint our skin? If you put love in your art…,” while the accompanying video features several women singing over her voice. When did you first hear the song?
Mickalene Thomas: I think I heard it when I was in graduate school. A lot of what I’m excited about with my work—and I think many artists might feel the same way—is that sometimes your ideas come five years before. And that’s sort of the magic of being an artist; it’s all about time and space and resources. For me, when I heard it, I knew it resonated in a way, but I didn’t know how I would use it.
