PUBLISHER
Santa Monica Museum of Art

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 11 x 9.5 in. / 80 pgs / 30 color / 35 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 6/30/2012
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2012 p. 77

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780983967200 TRADE
List Price: $39.95 CDN $50.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE

Santa Monica, CA
Santa Monica Museum of Art, 04/14/12-08/18/12

New York
Brooklyn Museum of Art, 09/28/12-01/20/13

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SANTA MONICA MUSEUM OF ART

Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe

Edited by Lisa Melandri. Foreword by Elsa Longhauser, Arnold L. Lehman. Text by Sarah Lewis, Denise Murrell. Interview by Lisa Melandri.

Mickalene Thomas (born 1971) has won acclaim for her elaborate, colorful paintings of African-American women, often posed provocatively against rich, 1970s-themed backgrounds adorned with rhinestones, enamel and acrylics. Thomas draws from earlier traditions of portraiture to arrive at her contemporary sensibility. She engages with the tension between a personal investigation of eroticism, black femininity and beauty and a pop-cultural critique of the overt sexual imagery prevalent in the media--from Blaxploitation film heroines like Cleopatra Jones to the construction of middle-class, African-American taste in Ebony magazine. Her portraits of trans-generational female empowerment have been receiving attention far beyond the standard art-world venues and have been reproduced everywhere from The New Yorker to Bomb magazine. Thomas also reenvisions landscapes and interiors through playful and passionate recontextualizations of such artists as Romare Bearden, Édouard Manet, Henri Matisse and Balthus. Mickalene Thomas: The Origin of the Universe is the first monograph on the artist, and accompanies her first solo museum exhibition in the United States at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. It features a wide array of full-color reproductions of her work across media--much of it new and never before published--including photo collages and provocative landscapes, along with an interview with the artist and critical texts that elucidate her paintings’ investigations of femininity, sexuality and power, and provide extensive context for her oeuvre as a whole.

Featured image, "I Learned the Hard Way" (2010) is reproduced from Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe.

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

The New York Times

Roberta Smith

Mickalene Thomas's brash, exuberant paintings don't care what you think of them; they are much too busy simply - or not so simply - being themselves. Their sense of independence is driven home by this artist's invigorating exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, along with the realization that the museum's populist program sometimes hits the nail on the head…
Enhanced by burning colors; outrageously tactile, rhinestone-studded surfaces; and fractured, almost Cubist perspectives, these images draw equally from 19th- and 20th-century French modernism, portrait painting, 1970s blaxploitation extravagance and an array of postwar pictorial styles.

Wallpaper*

The Editiors

Her work burrows liberally from art history: female poses from Manet; grid constructions from David Hockney; interiors from Matisse that are liberally jazzed up to a 1970s flamboyance with the swatches of fabrics she collages over furniture and walls.

Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe

STATUS: Out of print | 00/00/00

For assistance locating a copy, please see our list of recommended out of print specialists

FROM THE BOOK

"Since the outset of her career, Mickalene Thomas has forged a creative process and pictorial style that reimagines past masterworks as vivid evocations of the contemporary moment. From her signature portraits of vibrant black women to an evolving series of landscapes and interiors, Thomas has manifested a discourse with a global artistic legacy spanning the modernizing turn in mid-nineteenth-century France, the visual strategies of postwar African American artists, and the meaning-laden processes and materials of transnational studio practice today.
The artist’s recent paintings underscore the degree to which she has posed the composite body of art history as her ultimate muse. It is her parrying engagement with anterior generations of artists that has induced her most sustained inspiration in developing a creative vision wholly her own."

Denise Murrell, excerpted from the chapter, "The Anterior as Muse: Recent Paintings by Mickalene Thomas".

BOOKS ON AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTISTS

THE SOUL OF A NATION READER

Edited with text by Mark Godfrey, Allie Biswas.

GREGORY R. MILLER & CO.

ISBN: 9781941366325
USD $39.95 | CAN $55.95 UK £ 34.99

Pub Date: 6/1/2021
Forthcoming

ASSEMBLING A BLACK COUNTER CULTURE

By DeForrest Brown, Jr.

PRIMARY INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781734489736
USD $16.00 | CAN $22.5

Pub Date: 12/7/2021
Forthcoming

THE WAYLAND RUDD COLLECTION

UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE

ISBN: 9781946433275
USD $40.00 | CAN $56 UK £ 35

Pub Date: 8/31/2021
Forthcoming

LORRAINE O’GRADY: BOTH/AND

DANCING FOXES PRESS/BROOKLYN MUSEUM

ISBN: 9780872731868
USD $40.00 | CAN $56 UK £ 35

Pub Date: 4/13/2021
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AFRICOBRA: MESSAGES TO THE PEOPLE

Edited by Jeffreen Hayes. Foreword by Chana Sheldon. Text by Leslie Guy.

GREGORY MILLER/MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, NORTH MIAMI

ISBN: 9781941366301
USD $49.95 | CAN $69.95 UK £ 44.99

Pub Date: 1/5/2021
Active | In stock

IN SEARCH OF AFRICAN AMERICAN SPACE

LARS MüLLER PUBLISHERS

ISBN: 9783037786338
USD $30.00 | CAN $42

Pub Date: 9/29/2020
Active | In stock

THEASTER GATES: BLACK MADONNA

Edited by Josef Helfenstein, Daniel Kurjakovic. Text by Elvira Dyangani Ose, Theaster Gates, Daniel Kurjakovic.

WALTHER KöNIG, KöLN

ISBN: 9783960987246
USD $55.00 | CAN $77

Pub Date: 4/14/2020
Active | In stock

BARKLEY L. HENDRICKS: BASKETBALL

Text by Terry Myers.

SKIRA/JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY

ISBN: 9788857241487
USD $25.00 | CAN $35

Pub Date: 10/6/2020
Active | In stock

COMMON PRACTICE

Edited by Carlos Rolón, Dan Peterson, John Dennis.

SKIRA

ISBN: 9788857243979
USD $70.00 | CAN $98

Pub Date: 6/1/2021
Forthcoming

GORDON PARKS: MUHAMMAD ALI

STEIDL/THE GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION/THE NELSON-ATKINS MUSEUM OF ART

ISBN: 9783958296190
USD $55.00 | CAN $75

Pub Date: 2/11/2020
Active | In stock

WRITING THE FUTURE: BASQUIAT AND THE HIP-HOP GENERATION

Edited by Liz Munsell, Greg Tate. Text by J. Faith Almiron, Dakota DeVos, Hua Hsu, Carlo McCormick.

MFA PUBLICATIONS, MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON

ISBN: 9780878468713
USD $50.00 | CAN $69.95

Pub Date: 5/5/2020
Active | In stock

BARKLEY L. HENDRICKS: LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS

Text by Barry Schwabsky.

SKIRA/JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY

ISBN: 9788857241517
USD $25.00 | CAN $35

Pub Date: 4/21/2020
Active | In stock

BARKLEY L. HENDRICKS: WORKS ON PAPER

Text by Laila Pedro.

SKIRA/JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY

ISBN: 9788857241470
USD $25.00 | CAN $34.95

Pub Date: 11/26/2019
Active | In stock

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: REMIX

Edited with text by Stéphane Ibars. Text by Alain Lombard. Interview with Yvon Lambert.

ACTES SUD/COLLECTION LAMBERT

ISBN: 9782330126308
USD $33.00 | CAN $45

Pub Date: 11/19/2019
Active | In stock

JOE MINTER: TO YOU THROUGH ME

Introduction by Phillip March Jones.

INSTITUTE 193/TINWOOD

ISBN: 9781732848221
USD $30.00 | CAN $45 UK £ 27

Pub Date: 9/17/2019
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MELVIN EDWARDS: LYNCH FRAGMENTS

Edited by Adriano Pedrosa, Rodrigo Moura. Text by Hamid Irbouh, Rebecca Wolff, Renata Bittencourt, Rodrigo Moura.

MASP

ISBN: 9788531000515
USD $49.95 | CAN $69.95 UK £ 40

Pub Date: 10/22/2019
Active | In stock

GLENN LIGON: UNTITLED (AMERICA)/DEBRIS FIELD/SYNECDOCHE/NOTES FOR A POEM ON THE THIRD WORLD

Text by Helen Molesworth. Poems by Robin Coste Lewis. Interview with Glenn Ligon, Hamza Walker.

REGEN PROJECTS

ISBN: 9783791300009
USD $45.00 | CAN $63 UK £ 40

Pub Date: 1/28/2020
Active | In stock

TODD GRAY: EUCLIDEAN GRIS GRIS

POMONA COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART

ISBN: 9780997930603
USD $45.00 | CAN $63 UK £ 40

Pub Date: 2/18/2020
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THEASTER GATES: EVERY SQUARE NEEDS A CIRCLE

Text by Theaster Gates, Zachary Cahill.

GRAY

ISBN: 9780996454049
USD $65.00 | CAN $92 UK £ 57

Pub Date: 4/7/2020
Active | In stock

CHARLES GAINES: PALM TREES AND OTHER WORKS

Text by David Platzker. Interview by Cherise Smith.

HAUSER & WIRTH PUBLISHERS

ISBN: 9783906915463
USD $50.00 | CAN $69.95

Pub Date: 2/18/2020
Active | In stock

STANLEY WHITNEY: AFTERNOON PAINTINGS

Text by Lynne Tillman.

LISSON GALLERY

ISBN: 9780947830748
USD $35.00 | CAN $49

Pub Date: 5/19/2020
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SONDRA PERRY: A TERRIBLE THING

Text by Will Brown, et al.

HATJE CANTZ

ISBN: 9783775746366
USD $45.00 | CAN $63

Pub Date: 6/29/2021
Forthcoming

LEAD BELLY: A LIFE IN PICTURES

Edited by John Reynolds, Tiny Robinson. Text by Jack Kerouac, Glenn O’Brien, Mason Roberson, Pete Seeger, Tom Waits, et al. Poems by Tyehimba Jess.

STEIDL

ISBN: 9783958297036
USD $45.00 | CAN $63

Pub Date: 2/1/2022
Forthcoming

BLACK LIVES 1900: W.E.B. DU BOIS AT THE PARIS EXPOSITION

Introduction by Jacqueline Francis, Stephen G. Hall. Foreword by David Adjaye. Contribution by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

REDSTONE PRESS

ISBN: 9781942884538
USD $35.00 | CAN $39.95 UK £ 30

Pub Date: 10/29/2019
Active | In stock