This fall, Mickalene Thomas is taking over the world. The 50-year-old Brooklyn-based artist is launching the kind of global tour more in keeping with rock stars, kicking off her four-city Lévy Gorvy gallery mega-exhibition in New York with large-scale paintings based on Black women who appeared in the vintage pages of Jet magazine. Then she’s off to London, Paris, and Hong Kong to unveil three new series of works. The title of this globe-trotting extravaganza? Beyond the Pleasure Principle, a mashup of Janet Jackson (see her 1986 hit pop song) and Sigmund Freud (see his 1920 foundational essay). As if that weren’t enough, the artist has her first, career-spanning monograph out from Phaidon this fall. Thomas spoke with one of her idols from her studio as the paint was still drying.
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WHOOPI GOLDBERG: I’m a big fan of your work. Where are you right now?
MICKALENE THOMAS: I’m in Brooklyn, close to the Navy Yard. Where Spike Lee and all those Black bohemians used to be. I’m just floored to be talking to you. I have to say, you’ve inspired my personal and professional life. I remember your comedy performance in 1984 where you were wearing a white shirt on your head and calling it your “long, luxurious blond hair,” which changed everything for me—and not just for me, but I’m sure for a lot of Black and Brown kids who look like us. I used a little clip of that in one of my videos called “Do I Look Like a Lady?,” the arc of which is about Black female singers, comedians, and celebrities and how they project and personify beauty and their understanding of what that means in the world.