Hair Portrait #20

Mickalene Thomas

2014

Plastic rhinestones and acrylic on panel (30 panels)

Seattle Art Museum

Mickalene Thomas' Hair Portrait series taps the tradition of the celebrity portrait that Warhol popularized. Noting the exclusion of black women from portraiture in western art, Thomas turns her subject into a dazzling, glamorous icon. The artist understands hair styling as a unique form of expression and individuality for black women. In this work, a single portrait, which she found online, is repeated thirty times in different hues. Moving from light to dark, from visibility to near invisibility, the repetition of a single image—a practice Andy Warhol frequently deployed in his portraits—is given entirely new meaning. General Acqu