.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Mickalene Thomas’s MS. PU-SE-KAT #1 is a stunning, fierce portrayal of womanhood. Created in 2003, just after she received her MFA from Yale University School of Art, the topless woman of MS. PU-SE-KAT #1 is a commanding presence. At almost a metre in height, the work continues Thomas’s investigations into African American beauty and femininity, offering a depiction that is at once vulnerable, joyful, and unabashed. Glittering and bright, its surface dazzles from thousands of colourful rhinestones, Thomas’s signature material and a contemporary take on Pointillism. Indeed, her oeuvre endeavours to revise and ‘de-Europeanise’ the history of painting and Thomas’s touchstone are omnivorous, ranging from French Modernists to Photorealism and Romare Bearden (R. Smith, ‘Loud, Proud and Painted’, New York Times, 27 September 2012). While MS. PU-SE-KAT #1 may recall the long history of the odalisque in painting, the work resuscitates the subject, liberating her from the clutches of the male gaze; she refuses to cower. Moreover, by featuring a Black woman, Thomas overturns centuries of marginalisation for the Black figure in art.
Born in Camden, New Jersey, Thomas has recently been included in exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Atlanta’s High Museum of Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C., among others. This year she will be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. Her collage-like compositions, which layer material and pattern, are loud and enthusiastic; they demand a profound engagement from their viewers. For Thomas, this chaos speaks to the ‘journeys’ of her female subjects, ‘their own perseverance, their own struggles’. ‘The residue,’ she has said, ‘the unearthing of time and space, is about their scars, and mostly it’s about the artifice of what you may think you see and the reality of it being another truth’ (M. Thomas, quoted in ‘Frieze NY Special: In the studio with Mickalene Thomas’, Lux, Summer 2020). Her women take pride in their histories and experiences—the moments that make up a life. Speaking to the manifold ways of being, MS. PU-SE-KAT #1 represents personhood in all its brutal beauty.
Born in Camden, New Jersey, Thomas has recently been included in exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Atlanta’s High Museum of Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C., among others. This year she will be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. Her collage-like compositions, which layer material and pattern, are loud and enthusiastic; they demand a profound engagement from their viewers. For Thomas, this chaos speaks to the ‘journeys’ of her female subjects, ‘their own perseverance, their own struggles’. ‘The residue,’ she has said, ‘the unearthing of time and space, is about their scars, and mostly it’s about the artifice of what you may think you see and the reality of it being another truth’ (M. Thomas, quoted in ‘Frieze NY Special: In the studio with Mickalene Thomas’, Lux, Summer 2020). Her women take pride in their histories and experiences—the moments that make up a life. Speaking to the manifold ways of being, MS. PU-SE-KAT #1 represents personhood in all its brutal beauty.