A Little Taste Outside of Love by Mickalene Thomas in the Brooklyn Museum, July 2010

Artist: Mickalene Thomas

Title: A Little Taste Outside of Love

Date: 2007

Medium: Acrylic, enamel and rhinestones on wood panel

Classification: Painting

Dimensions: Overall: 108 x 144 in. (274.3 x 365.8 cm) Other (Left section): 108 x 48 in. (274.3 x 121.9 cm) Other (Center section): 108 x 48 in. (274.3 x 121.9 cm) Other (Right section): 108 x 48 in. (274.3 x 121.9 cm)

Credit Line: Gift of Giulia Borghese and Designated Purchase Fund

Accession Number: 2008.7a-c

Rights: © Mickalene Thomas

Mickalene Thomas creates monumental pictures that explore and challenge the representation and objectification of women, and black women in particular. She draws inspiration from images of iconic African American women, emblems of the Black Power Movement, and her mother’s photographs from the 1970s. Here, she casts an African American woman as leading lady in an updated version of an established visual archetype—a sexualized female subject seemingly caught unaware as she reclines passively in her own beauty. In doing so, the artist turns the historic nude on its head and ousts the white European woman from the bed where she often lounges, attended by a black maidservant, in Western art.

Text from: www.brooklynmuseum.org/objects/5044