This is Three Graces: Les Trois Femmes Noires (2010) by Mickalene Thomas. Le déjeuner sur l’herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires calls back to the iconic Manet painting of the same title (at least the first half). This painting is massive, standing at 10 feet tall and 24 feet wide. With this work, Thomas is both critiquing the original as well as the ways in which the art world approaches depictions of women. In terms of the arrangements of the figures, Thomas’ work is very reminiscent of Manet’s painting, with one central difference. In Trois Femmes Noires, the three women are all looking directly at the viewer. Additionally, where Manet’s women are naked, Thomas’ are fully dressed.

What difference do the eyes of the subjects make on your viewing experience? 

Thomas’ process is something that many people wonder about when coming across her work. Her work manifests in many stages, particularly for works like Three Graces which combine photography, collage, and painting.

First, Thomas photographs her models and then creates a collage using the photograph as a base (left). Finally, she creates the painting using the collage as a reference. Incorporating paint as well as rhinestones onto the surface, which in this case is wood.

About the Artist

Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971) is an American artist who creates works combining painting with non-traditional materials (like rhinestones) and techniques (like collage). She depicts almost exclusively Black women, often nude, sometimes sexual. She engages with histories of exploitation and objectification that Black women face in media, the arts, and daily life. 

This is data-screen-skin.blue (2023) by Tishan Hsu. In data-screen-skin.blue, Hsu utilizes a combination of computer software and practical materials to create hybrid pieces that reference both human bodies (the eye, flesh) and the digital. The title alludes to this hybridization as well, written as a saved file would be. 

Hsu utilizes a combination of computer software and practical materials to create hybrid pieces that reference both human bodies (the eye, flesh) and the digital. 

Where do art and technology meet? There is a massive discussion around AI creations and whether they can or should be considered as art. How does Hsu’s work contribute to that conversation?

About the Artist

Tishan Hsu (b. 1951) has been making art about the inevitability of the digital world since the 80s. As we have entered the world in which digital technology completely runs almost every aspect of our lives, Hsu’s works, such as data-screen-skin.blue approach the enveloping of humanity by the digital. 

This is Preparations (2021), a painting by Zoe Hawk. Preparations depicts three girls in the process of getting ready—for what, we don’t know for sure—but we see two of them doing their hair while the third stands and watches. The two doing their hair stand contorted, forcing their bodies into uncomfortable positions in the name of beauty, with one going as far as using an ironing board to straighten her hair. Keen can mean many things. In relationships, it has come to signify interest. Are these girls primping themselves because they desire interest? Are they doing it because they have to meet certain standards of beauty to even be seen as human? Hawk talks of this adolescent period as the time in which she came to the awareness that boys and men alike had begun to notice her in new ways that terrified her for the future. 

About the Artist

Zoe Hawk (b. 1982) is an American painter based in the Midwest. She deals primarily with the complex experience of girlhood—feelings of belonging, what identity means as a girl, fears of growing up, etc. Her paintings, using bright washes of colors, have an underlying sense of discomfort, taking inspiration from stories like Alice in Wonderland and other children’s books that engage with the macabre.