Phaidon Press, 2022

Over the past two decades, Mickalene Thomas’s critically acclaimed and extensive body of work has spanned painting, collage, photography, video, and the immersive installations that have become her signature. With influences ranging from nineteenth-century painting to popular culture, Thomas’s art articulates a complex and empowering vision of aspiration and self-image through gender and race while expanding on and subverting common definitions of beauty, sexuality, and celebrity. Publication coincided with the opening of Mickalene Thomas’s first global exhibition, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, at Lévy Gorvy galleries in New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris in 2021.