[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you're here. Happy Election Day. If you haven't voted yet, polls are open until 9:00 PM in New York and 8:00 PM in Jersey. Tune in to WNYC tonight at 8:00 PM for our election night special, hosted by Brian Lehrer.

On today's show on All Of It, we'll talk about what's being screened at DOC NYC Film Festival and speak to the director of a daring documentary that is about the impact of religious radicalization on a family. Author, Mona Awad, will join me to preview the novel, Rouge. It's our Get Lit With All Of It Bookcub pick for the month. We have the editors of The New Brownies' Book: A Love Letter to Black Families. It's an ode to a children's magazine that was published by W.E.B. Du Bois in the 1920s. That is our plan so let's get this started with Artist Mickalene Thomas.

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Alison Stewart: New York-based Visual Artist Mickalene Thomas currently has two shows running in our listening area, one of her work and one she curated. Here in New York City, you can still catch the exhibition titled J-- Can you say it for me?

Mickalene Thomas: Je t’adore'.

Alison Stewart: 'Je t’adore'. Thank you. As I always said, I only had one semester of French. 'Je t’adore' at the Yancey Richardson Gallery in Chelsea through Saturday, November 11th. That includes 14 large-scale pieces featuring the Black female form and an exploration of sexuality, memory, and desire. A vogue piece about the show notes, "Each image is so embellished with Mickalenesims, including her signature, applique, gemstones, pop art-like coloring, and nods to vary prints and patterns that don't distract from the vulnerability of each figure so much as artfully emphasize it that's here in the city."

You can also head to New Haven to Yale University for a multi-gallery installation co-organized by Thomas. It's titled, Portrait of an Unlikely Space. The show includes 18th and 19th-century portraits of African Americans, miniatures, and silhouettes on paper placed in rooms of the era juxtaposed with modern pieces like Sula Bermúdez's 2021 replica of her childhood dollhouse, but made of sugar. That is up until January 7th. Mickalene Thomas is in the studio today. Mickalene, welcome back to the show.

Mickalene Thomas: Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm very excited.

Alison Stewart: The 14 mixed media photo collages as part of your exhibition in New York City is inspired by research into the imagery of Black women from old Jet magazines and this 1950s French publications news [unintelligible 00:02:40]. What do you remember about your first exposure to Jet Magazine?

Mickalene Thomas: Oh my gosh. My first memory is just having the Jet Magazine on the coffee table and flipping through and being so enamored with the beauty of the week page. Seeing these incredible women in their bathed suits, but just talking about who they were and what they did, just highlighting their activities and just personifying this really exciting moment and time about who they were really gave me a sense of agency and validation.

I think it was probably one of the first times I felt like, "Oh, this is beauty. Oh, these are beautiful Black women on this page." That excited me. I remember my cousin and I just always wanting to tear out the page and just put it up on our wall, but seeing who had the best image of the one [laughs] on the page, and then, of course, my brother wanting to take them for other reasons [laughs] and have them on his wall.

Alison Stewart: That's funny.

Mickalene Thomas: I don't know. I think for me as a young girl, it was the first notion of validation, of sense of self. I think just also what the Jet Magazine personified culturally. It really displayed all of this knowledge about Black life, Black America, whether it was sociopolitical, cultural, entertainment, or even about local people. Then it had this page of this college girl describing her attributes and what she liked.

Alison Stewart: Well, that's why our parents left it out. They wanted to make sure we had exposure to, especially if you were in spaces that were predominantly white.

Mickalene Thomas: Oh, absolutely. I think that was important. It was what they had known as what they say the Black Bible. If you didn't have it on your table or in your home, I think Black families would look at you like something was wrong with you.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Now, tell me about this other magazine, the '50s French publication.

Mickalene Thomas: The '50s French publication, I go to France a lot, and I've been looking for imagery that just really related to the diaspora in a different way and how other Black bodies are seen in the world, and how we see ourselves, and how we are personified or portrayed and are desired by the other. Once I found this, what excited me was some of the images felt very sculptural, but also about a different type of desire from the gaze of the photographer, Giamatti.

Like how he was looking at these Black bodies almost in a sensual way of a beauty that was not necessarily about eroticism, but more about a desire of-- I guess the word I want to use is putting them in a place of other, but in a way that positioned them to-- I feel like they were empowering. They were in an empowering moment even though they were just being looked at from a male's gaze. Some way I thought a lot of the images was a lot like Monterey and the desire of really wanting to fetishize the Black body. I guess that's more what it was. It was sensual, but it was also about fetishization of the Black body in a sense.

Alison Stewart: This leads to my next question. When you first walk up on the gallery and the first thing you notice is the women are all nude. When I [unintelligible 00:07:01] nude versus naked. They're not naked. They're nude.

Mickalene Thomas: No, they're definitely not naked.

Alison Stewart: What's the difference? I'm curious. In your mind.

Mickalene Thomas: I guess in my mind, what's the difference? It's like there's a comfortability with the naked I think feels more about a sexuality or erotica that is portrayed in a sense that could lean more on pornographic. Where the nude is really about the body, exploration of celebration of how we see ourselves and very proud of it. It doesn't fall and align with exploitation. For me, even though these images really fall in the middle, in some sense, because how they were portrayed and what these images were for. We have to be real. They were--

Alison Stewart: Meant for someone else's pleasure?

Mickalene Thomas: Meant for someone else's pleasure, but they were monthlies. They were calendars and they were displayed nude. What I found really fascinating about the images, specifically the ones from the '70s, is that there was also this uncomfortable way in which the women were portrayed and also the photographers. It's like we are going to show some of this nudity, but we're also going to hide it or we're going to have some tongue-in-cheek way of talking about sexuality, in a sense, knowing that they couldn't show the woman's pubic hair. Because they couldn't do that, they would use plants at front.

Alison Stewart: There's a lot of strategic--

Mickalene Thomas: Strategic placement and it would be like the bush in front of the bush.

Alison Stewart: That's so true. That's hilarious.

Mickalene Thomas: To me, it was like some humor within it as well of how we see ourselves and how bodies are displayed and just having fun with it in some sense. Also, the way the women were positioned and composed in particular environments. It was really creating narrative around the placement of the nude body. Like, "Let's do this story in this fantasy." Really creating a fantasy around the desire. Like some would be holding a tennis racket but--

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: No clothes.

Mickalene Thomas: But no clothes, or she's at the beach leaning against a boulder of some sort, but it's really strange dichotomy and storytelling, and almost this place notion of fantasy and desire and illusion of how we are perceived in the world.

Alison Stewart: Then you take one of these images, for example, October, 1981 features a woman, and we'll stay with the French theme. Her derrière is at the camera. She's looking back with a smile, and there's a bejeweled outline of a hat and the rhinestones that follow the curve of her body. When do you know you want to use embellishments, and how do you think about where and what to embellish?

Mickalene Thomas: I don't always know when I want to use the embellishments. These, in particular, when I first made these images, there were going to be no embellishments at all. That wasn't the intent. The intent was to just keep them purely in the photographic language. Also, it was a new technique and material that I was working with being how they are printed, using the technique of dye sublimation, which is basically just a heat transfer on any substrate that you want.

They could have easily been printed on fabric or canvas or something like that, but I decided to print them on aluminum. Initially, they were just going to stay as that, be printed on aluminum and be these collaged images of these archival materials and footage that I found and recontextualized and scanned and discolored and shifted and changed to have my language within them, but I think after I made these and saw them, I just felt like it needed a little more of-- For me, I don't necessarily say what I do is embellishment. It's more just like this gestural mark.

I felt that they were calling for this activation in some sort, and this way of really pronouncing or almost as if in the same way as the photographs from the '70s would put a plant in front of the bush. This way of, "Okay, is this okay?" I'd do-- giving myself permission to present these by also drawing on them as if a child was like, "Oh, I'm a little shy about this. Is this right? Should I be showing these?" As if I was my brother's younger sister and went into his room and he had these images on the wall, and I just drew on them as like, "Oh my gosh, you shouldn't be looking at these or should I be looking at these?

It's also playing with that dichotomy of who is allowed to see and how are we looking, and is it okay to be looking at these? In a way where there's a shyness around it. There's a shyness around our bodies, and so oftentimes when we are looking at nude bodies, we often feel like we need permission to have that access into that. I wanted to play with the notion that it is okay to look at these, but it's also okay to be a little shy about it. About how you're looking and discovering other bodies and noticing them.

Alison Stewart: I think it also, it's a little bit of an invitation because it's eye-catching. Then it's also an invitation because it adds dimension to the work, which brings it into the real.

Mickalene Thomas: Yes. I definitely wanted to play with the dimensionality of it and thinking of how the collage elements are layered, almost like a relief-like, and repositioning the body and juxtaposing the different shapes on one another. Because I really wanted them to feel like they're coming off the wall, and that the engagement and create some monumentality to them that you were going into it. That they were no longer a page from a calendar or a printed matter. That now these women are very elevated in their own way because they were anonymous. Unlike the beauty of the weak, you had a name of some sort, identity of the person, and these, you just had a month and a year.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Mickalene Thomas. We're talking about her show at the Yancey Richardson Gallery. I'll get it right, Je t’adore.

Mickalene Thomas: Je t’adore.

Alison Stewart: Why was that the right title for the show?

Mickalene Thomas: I chose the title. One, I really enjoy using French titles as a way of [unintelligible 00:15:08] my work. I feel like there's-- to bring just cultural and historical elements in how I see images, but also just to really play on words of like, jet was a part of it, right? If you take the first is a jet, and it's basically adore. The word in French is I adore. It's like almost I desire. I'm here and I'm being looked at, and so I wanted to really give the viewer and the audience a way of entering the work at a very initial point, the access to say, "You two to come in, and it's okay to desire, it's okay to enjoy these."

Alison Stewart: That show is up until this weekend, November 11th.

Mickalene Thomas: Oh, my gosh, you're right. It is.

Alison Stewart: Yancey Richardson. Yes, we got you in here right in the nick of time. The other show we're going to talk about, Mickalene Thomas, Portrait of an Unlikely Space is on display through January 7th, 2024 up in New Haven at Yale. This is so interesting. This Rose Apprentice portrait, this is a lone exhibition revolving around this small watercolor portrait on Ivory. This Rose Apprentice is the woman's name?

Mickalene Thomas: Yes.

Alison Stewart: It's by the artist, Sarah Goodrich. Tell us a little about the origin of this little portrait and this woman who's just looking out at us.

Mickalene Thomas: Oh, my gosh. She is so magnificent and beautiful. When I first saw this image, when Keely Orgeman introduced me to the work, I was a little shy about accessing or coming into understanding these images from the emancipation period, because it's not necessarily where my work stems from, that particular period, but the origin of this work is that Rose printed-- There's some narrative around it.

We know some things about how it come about, how her portrait's painted, but the family that she worked for, she was a domestic worker, and the family that she worked for had her portrait painted by a painter that was also in proximity to where she lived. For me, the importance of the origin of the story is really trying to figure out, obviously, Rose Prentice's family does not have the legacy. They don't own this piece like the family of Rose-- the domestic workers that Rose Prentice-- The family that Rose Prentice worked for owns this particular portrait of her, but what I found very fascinating is the love and care and detail of what they wanted to portray her as, not a domestic worker.

Alison Stewart: She's very present. She's such a [unintelligible 00:18:17].

Mickalene Thomas: She's very present. She's in her Sunday best, but it also speaks about perhaps the perception and the love or the care that they understood in the same way that she was giving them as a domestic worker, that this family wanted to include her in particular family of portraits and that they had this for her, although it wasn't a gift. Often, these portraits from the emancipation period in 19th century, portraits of Black people, some of them are unknown and nameless, and some of them are just by the jobs that they were doing.

The fact that you also know a little of the history of Rose Prentice just really, for me, is very empowering and a testament to some of the dynamics of the relationships and complexities that we have with Black and white families. When you look at how this is painted on ivory, every part of the material is painted in the same way that they would have their own portrait painted. It's with the care, the framing of it, the care that they took of it, how it's boxed, the little detail of the paintbrush. There's a lot of love in this portrait.

Alison Stewart: How did you design the show around this particular piece?

Mickalene Thomas: I decided to design the show in a way that allow the viewer to come in as if they were entering a domestic space. It was very important for me, even with Keely Orgeman, to think about how the viewer would engage with each piece, each of the works in the show, whether it's the contemporary work or the other portraits that we have, like embedded into the wall to make you feel like you were very intimately engaged with the piece one at a time.

When you walk in and you sit into one area that where-- You have the option to, if you want, to sit and to be in a domestic setting and really experience the rose princess portrait one-on-one so that each person can have their own time with each portrait, each body of work throughout the show. Because of the sensitivity with a lot of the different portraits, the daguerreotype and the material of the photographs, some of them have two and three candlelight.

It creates this mood, like the lights are low. It creates a bit of slowing down and really of time spent and the space. I'm often really interested in how we as viewers engage with work. Oftentimes there's a speed. Depending on the work, there's-- Depending on our schedules, we don't have enough time. We read the label, we read the wall text, we go through, but I really wanted something where there's no wall text. It's just the work.

Alison Stewart: Also the opposite of the bright white gallery.

Mickalene Thomas: The opposite, yes, and so the walls are painted and colors of blackness, colors of skin and blackness, I would say. It's this deep dark brown, rich brown, or a black-blue color. The color of skin. I wanted you to feel like you were embodied by these black, beautiful bodies from the 19th century as you walked through, and so the color choice was very specific for me and those are colors I'd normally use in a lot of my spaces just as a signifier or extension of my blackness.

Alison Stewart: Then how is the more modern work by [unintelligible 00:22:26], that beautiful, how it's made out of sugar is incredible.

Mickalene Thomas: It's incredible, but for me, and I think for Keely Orgeman, the selection of bringing in contemporary artists were very important to really create this discourse of conversation of the past and present, to really think about artists who are working out of these concepts, whether it be through domestic and desire and memory and transformation, but also about how they see themselves in their own personal journey and their stories in relationship to their personal narratives in this particular piece, which is really beautiful, because even, it, for me, encompass in some way this conceptual idea of the house, a reminder and also the vulnerability and fragility of homes being displaced, movement of-- Speaks about the fragility of the homes and how many of these people that are being portrayed have felt displaced or traversed or moved through their own histories.

Alison Stewart: What do you like about being a curator?

Mickalene Thomas: Oh, that's a great question. What I like about being a curator is that I'm able to engage in conversation with other artists that have very interesting and fascinating ideas outside of my own, and that I'm able to provide a platform of community for them.

Alison Stewart: I heard you use the word shy about four times in the interview.

Mickalene Thomas: I did?

Alison Stewart: Yes. Are you a shy person?

Mickalene Thomas: I am a little shy. I am. I have this persona, I think, because I'm quite tall. I am expressive. I like to wear really incredible, interesting, fashionable clothes, but I think that's how I express myself. I think when it comes to how I am, I'm-- I had a friend describe me as an introvert, extrovert, that I'm both. I outwardly, I'm an extrovert, but mostly I'm much more introverted and would--

Socially, if I'm not among my friends, I'm usually boisterous-- When I'm among my friends, I'm boisterous and I'm comfortable, but when I'm not, I like pull back and I observe and I look. I think it just has to do a lot with how I actually was raised and grew up, that it was always this oscillating between these worlds and having to figure out how to interact with people. I think of myself as a shy person.

Alison Stewart: My guest has been Mickalene Thomas. You can see Je t’adore at the Yancey Richardson Gallery. It closes on November 11th so get over there. You can also see Portrait of an Unlikely Space that's up in New Haven through January 7th, 2024. Mickalene, thank you for coming to the studio.

Mickalene Thomas: Thank you for having me, Alison Stewart. This has been-- Definitely I can check it off one of my bucket lists. [laughter]

 

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