to view the Art in America - Durham Press

Qusuquzah, Une Très Belle
Négresse #3, 2012, rhinestones,
acrylic, oil and enamel on panel,
96 by 80 inches.
EVOkING BOTh ’70S dEcOr ANd cUBISM, ThOMAS USES wOOd PANELING AS A MOTIf IN
hEr wOrk, ThE GrAIN SErVING IN OPTIcALLY PLEASING cONTrAST TO ThE SPArkLE.
in Qusuquzah Standing Sideways (2012), the lone photograph
in the Santa Monica presentation and one of 13 included in
brooklyn, thomas’s subject appears in a funky get-up consisting
of an off-the-shoulder, short-sleeved paisley jumpsuit; wide,
red-velvet belt; thick necklace; and gold, sequined beret, perhaps
a flashy take on the iconic black Panther headgear. She
meets the viewer’s gaze directly, hand on hip and foot planted
on a piece of furniture cut off by the frame. behind her is a wall
of wood paneling, a material that thomas—evoking not just ’70s
decor but also cubism—uses as a motif in her paintings as well,
the grain serving in optically pleasing contrast to the sparkle.
in “origin,” Qusuquzah also appears in rhinestone paintings
around 8 feet high and 7 feet wide, as does another model,
din. (Santa Monica featured three portraits of Qusuquzah
and two of din; brooklyn has these plus an additional portrait
of Qusuquzah.) each work is titled with the subject’s name,
followed by Une Très Belle Négresse (a very beautiful black
woman), a reference to Manet, who in 1862 painted a woman
he described in his journal as “Laure, une très belle négresse.”
Set against floral backgrounds in beiges and pastels, the
women pose assertively and invite admiration; the large scale
implies their importance. each subject is styled in the same
clothes and makeup in her multiple paintings. Qusuquzah’s
turquoise Sunday-best hat echoes her eye makeup and features
a fishnet veil—an impressive latticework composed of
rhinestones. din sports a sizable afro, purple eye shadow, blue
lipstick and a big silver necklace.
Qusuquzah’s and din’s confident bearings and unabashed
adornment seem at odds, to say the least, with the impassive
appearance of the anonymous subject in the courbet painting
after which the exhibition is titled. courbet’s famous oilon-canvas
beaver shot, L’Origine du monde (1866), depicts
a vulva, splayed legs, a torso and a breast, leaving out identifying
characteristics that might convey a personality, such
as a face, or body parts capable of action, like arms or feet:
pussy as mysterious, powerful void, front and center. the
“origin” exhibition contains new bejeweled takes on courbet’s
painting—one, as the viewer learns from the catalogue, with
thomas herself as the model; another with her partner, artist
carmen McLeod. Like duchamp’s Étant donnés (1946-66)—
which trumps courbet’s Origine with a scene of a splayed,
naked woman even paler and more lifeless-looking than her
predecessor, and which, installed permanently at the Philadelphia
Museum of art, is viewed through a pair of peepholes—thomas’s
renderings raise the unsettling, and timeworn,
question of whether or not courbet’s supine nude might
be dead and/or have been raped. encrusting the figure in
rhinestones hardly prevents such a reading, and in fact might
make the body appear only more inanimate. and depicting a
possibly violated or deceased female in such festive decorative
trimmings offers at best a confusing message.
thomas referenced duchamp’s Étant donnés directly in the
installation “take all the time you need” (2012), featured in Santa
Monica. (it doesn’t appear in the brooklyn presentation, which
instead includes four installations created specially for the show:
domestic interiors similar to the backdrops used for thomas’s
paintings and photographs.) Like duchamp’s tableau, the instal-
Qusuquzah Standing Sideways, 2012,
c-print, 60 by 48 inches.
lation involved viewing by peephole. first, you encountered a
tangerine-orange door with gold trim set into a gallery wall. the
eponymous funk tune by Roy ayers could be heard playing,
seemingly from behind the door. Looking through the peephole,
you saw a furnished room with nobody in sight, and it was
unclear whether the space was in fact a space or merely a twodimensional
illusion. (during the exhibition opening, however, a
live model lounged about inside, precluding this appealing ambiguity.)
the room was decorated in thomas’s retro esthetic, with
a wood-paneled wall hung with a third Origine-inspired painting
and vinyl records propped up on the floor: a conspicuous display
of cool. the door, though, wouldn’t open. if thomas succeeded,
you wanted to go in or at least see more. but you couldn’t.
in an interview with Melandri in the exhibition catalogue,
thomas insists that her flashy artistic style is more complicated
than bling. 1 She claims that she means to interrogate the
nature of artifice and beauty, how self-presentation occurs
through costume and pretense. it’s very easy, however, to
find thomas’s big, glimmering artworks guilty of the same
ostentation they apparently scrutinize.
her most iconic and publicly viewed painting to date, shown
in the brooklyn iteration of “origin” but not in Santa Monica,
is the three-panel Le déjeuner sur l’herbe: Les Trois Femmes
Noires (2010). commissioned by the Museum of Modern art,
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