Beautiful Fictions: Composing the Artificial in the Work of Mickalene Thomas

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dc.contributor.advisorShannon, Joshuaen_US
dc.contributor.authorShine, Tyleren_US
dc.contributor.departmentArt History and Archaeologyen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2015-09-18T05:36:26Z
dc.date.available2015-09-18T05:36:26Z
dc.date.issued2015en_US
dc.description.abstractThis thesis considers three paintings by the contemporary African American artist Mickalene Thomas. I argue that Thomas uses collage to analyze and highlight the socially constructed nature of identities and surroundings. I propose that collage functions in three ways in Thomas’s work: as a medium, an artistic strategy, and a metaphor for the multiple states of being in the world. Thomas refracts the art historical genres of portraiture, landscape, and still life through a black, queer, female lens that presents the complexities of black female subjectivities. However, the paucity of critical literature on Thomas’s work is indicative of a broader problem in contemporary art historical discourse when interpreting works by Black artists and often requires these artists to foreground their cultural and physical differences. This thesis redresses the simplistic interpretations of Thomas’s work by demonstrating the breadth and depth of her conceptual interests and in doing so argues that her works are propositions for how we might conceptualize the history of art.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/M2W63X
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/16925
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledArt historyen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledAfrican American studiesen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledGender studiesen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledartificeen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledbeautyen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledcollageen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledgenderen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledidentityen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledraceen_US
dc.titleBeautiful Fictions: Composing the Artificial in the Work of Mickalene Thomasen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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