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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Mickalene Thomas: Jet—Beautés du Mois

Sept 25 – Nov 16, 2019
3 Rue du Cloître Saint-Merri, 75004 Paris, France

Grainy black-and-white cutouts are positioned amid sikscreen prints, rhinestones, and oil-painted backgrounds in Mickalene Thomas’s new work. The subject is black women, and the cutouts are taken from Jet magazine’s legendary pinup calendars—the first “black is beautiful” calendars to circulate in the 1970s, and featuring housewives, students, and other non-model applicants. Today, Thomas uses this imagery to recognize black women as objects of desire, powerful in their diversity and history. —E.C.

Mickalene Thomas, 1977. Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/ Brussels, and Artist Rights Society, New York.