This guided tour of a new painting now on view at Seattle Art Museum in the Figuring History exhibit is presented as part of the spring 2018 edition of The Stranger’s Art + Performance Quarterly.
The Inspiration
Mickalene Thomas’s paintings typically riff on European old masters’ compositions, replacing white subjects with women of color. But “Resist,” Thomas’s first explicitly political painting, is instead a riff on 20th-century American artist Robert Rauschenberg’s “Manuscript.” Note its collage style and use of newspaper photo imagery. Instead of the eagle at the edge of Rauschenberg’s painting, Thomas represents the U.S. with a Coca-Cola logo. “Manuscript” is part of SAM’s permanent collection, and also happens to be on exhibit right now in the Wright Galleries for Modern & Contemporary Art.