Sleep: Deux Femmes Noires
Date2013
MediumWoodblock on paper, silkscreen on paper, and photographic elements
DimensionsSight: 32 1/8 × 74 7/8 inches (81.6 × 190.2 cm)
Framed: 38 1/4 × 80 1/2 inches (97.2 × 204.5 cm)
MarkingsStamped on back: "2013 Mickalene Thomas, Durham Press Inc"
Credit LineMuseum purchase.
Object number2015.6
Copyright© 2023 Mickalene Thomas / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
The images and text contained on this page are owned by Telfair Museums or used by the Museum with permission from the owners. Unauthorized reproduction, transmission or display of these materials is prohibited with the exception of items deemed “fair use” as defined by U.S. and international copyright laws.Label TextThis large-scale print composed of photographic, woodblock, and silkscreen elements directly references Gustave Courbet’s highly sensual painting Le Sommeil (The Sleepers) painted in 1866. Courbet’s painting shocked viewers during the nineteenth century with its brazen depiction of lesbianism. As a queer Black artist interested in issues of femininity, Mickalene Thomas updates Courbet’s theme as a normalization of homosexual love and returns power and sexual agency to her subjects.
This particular print originated from a small photographic collage that was also the basis for her prominent painting of the same subject. Thomas reimagined the scene with two women embracing on a pile of patterned textiles in a landscape composed from photographs of Thomas’s trip to Africa. Because their pose is so intimate, the openness of the landscape around them takes on a dream-like quality.
The collage process is extremely pronounced in Sleep: Deux Femmes Noires, as evidenced by the electric pink zig-zags that fracture the surface of the print. The collection of disparate photographs, prints, colors, and textures mirrors Thomas’s own desire to incorporate elements from a wide range of influences. She has noted that this particular work has similarities to landscapes by British painter David Hockney, but the work could also claim inspiration from American collagist Romare Bearden, Malian photographer Seydou Keita, and the nineteenth-century Hudson River Painters.
