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| Mickalene Thomas, Monet's Yellow Dining Room, 2012. Brooklyn Museum |
In 2011 Mickalene Thomas spent an artist's residency at Claude Monet's home in Giverny. While Monet's gardens are famous, his bright-hued interiors with syncopating patterns are less widely known. Over the next few years Thomas produced a series of collage-paintings of Giverny that seemingly draw more on Picasso and Matisse than Monet. The Giverny paintings have no figures and little glitter, but they mark a pivot in the artist's development. They led to more complex environments for Thomas' figure paintings.
The Broad's "Mickalene Thomas: All About Love" (through Sep. 29, 2024) includes just one Giverny painting, Monet's Yellow Dining Room, but their innovations can be seen throughout Thomas' later work.
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| Monet's yellow dining room, Giverny |
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| Monet's salon, Giverny |
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| Mickalene Thomas, Monet's Salon, 2012. Collection of Fotene Demoulas, promised gift to Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston |
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| Monet's kitchen, Giverny |
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| Mickalene Thomas, Monet's Kitchen, 2014 |
Comments
My favorite kitchen of all is Liza Lou's (American, b. 1969), at the Whitney.
https://whitney.org/collection/works/34855
Her Yellow Dining Room also cribs from Jonas Wood (Guest Room 2007).
The composition of Yellow Dining Room also looks like the fragmented, spatial compositions of her mentor, the photographer David Hilliard.
--- J. Garcin
She's spewing unalloyed hate toward trans people. She's vile, and her little soul is insulated from any cancel campaign. She's revolting.
In terms of both the leftwing and rightwing, notice how the far-left totalitarianism of the People's Republic of China is generally tolerated by lots of people across the political spectrum - inured to years of dealing with "Made in China" labels - who may be less indignant about that than what's going on in Europe or North America, etc.
No, we are not the rubes here.
Thomas got her MFA at Yale. Yale is the gatekeeper.
Politics? Yellow Dining Room is a pretty picture.
(Yellow is a popular color for "masterpieces." See Van Gogh.)
The collector who buys it could care less about her politics.
To some, Thomas is a brand name.
But does the totalitarian leftism of the People's Republic of China arouse more resentment, as much resentment or less resentment in the fashionable social-financial-educational settings of North America, Europe, etc, as other cultural-political issues do?
China is in the same place Spain was in 2008. Leftism did not save Spain. Austerity did.
Eventually, the bill comes due and pragmatism prevails over politics. It will happen here too.
This game you are playing, left vs. right, is just a distraction. Someone doesn't want you to notice that you don't have enough money to win the game.
--- J. Garcin