Art
Artists Embrace the Grayscale
Gray Matters, featuring 37 artists working almost exclusively in shades of gray, is a dazzling exhibition.
Mickalene Thomas
Opinion
Which Artist Should Create Obama’s Official Presidential Portrait?
In a perfect world, who would be the artist that captures the likeness of Obama for his official portrait?
Interview
The Queer Art that Helped Define Post-Blackness
In his collection of essays, Derek Conrad Murray explores questions of post-blackness by drawing on the artworks of Glenn Ligon, Kehinde Wiley, Mickalene Thomas, and Kalup Linzy.
Art
A Sprawling Show of Artists as Social Critics
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Spanning several media, much of the work in Us Is Them makes social commentary from the perspective of underrepresented populations. Notably, the show features some of the biggest names in contemporary African-American art, bringing the focus on the fraught nature of black existence
Art
At a Generally Flat Art on Paper Fair, Some Cutting Works
“My kid could do that” is the world’s most clichéd dismissal of Modern art.
Art
The Photographed, Collaged, and Painted Muses of Mickalene Thomas
New Jersey-born, Brooklyn-based artist Mickalene Thomas is best known for her richly textured, rhinestone-encrusted paintings of African-American women and bright, collaged interiors. Lesser known is her photography, which she’s long considered a crucial component of her art practice.
Art
From Black Performance to Stuff on a Shelf, a Visit to Five Shows in San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO — It's summer in the USA, and that means it's group-show season on both coasts.
Art
Finding Room to Breathe (and Feel) at Art Basel Miami Beach
MIAMI BEACH — One of the things I find hardest about art fairs — particularly those held in convention centers and large exhibition halls — is their aesthetic. Bright, clinical white everywhere, with temporary walls set at perfect right angles and the gridwork of pipes and rafters floating high abov
Books
Your Worst Fear and Your Best Fantasy Traced Through Art History
Holding a sign that reads "I am your worst fear, I am your best fantasy," a photograph of a proud and defiant woman at a gay liberation march in the 1970s opens Phaidon's newly published Art & Queer Culture, illustrating the dual visions of queer identity by the field of art history.
Art
Mickalene Thomas and the Seduction of Beauty
Mickalene Thomas's current exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum is a visual marvel. Bright colors, shimmering rhinestones, chaotic patterns, and bold-faced women abound. And not separately, mind you — Thomas has a proclivity for mashing up up into exquisitely rendered wholes that take the cut-and-paste
News
MTV's New Art Spots Have Potential to Reach 600M Viewers
MTV is trying to rekindle the "visual playground" of the 1980s and they hope the new art commercials by Rashaad Newsome, Mickalene Thomas, Tala Madani, Jani Ruscica and Mads Lynnerup will help them do it.
Art
Global Africa Project Dissects the Idea of Africa
The Museum of Art and Design, New York's The Global Africa Project makes an audacious claim: to present the art, design, architecture, and craft of the contemporary African diaspora. Given that Africa is the world’s second largest continent, with a population of over one billion dispersed among 54 d