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Episode: Artist Mickalene Thomas Gives Black Women Their Flowers

Author: NPR
Duration: 00:45:29

Episode Shownotes

In Mickalene Thomas' work, Black women are front and center. "We've been supportive characters for far too long," she says. "I would describe my art as radically shifting notions of beauty by claiming space." Her new exhibition of collages, paintings, and photographs is called All About Love. She spoke with

Tonya Mosley about how she "draws with scissors," using her mother as a muse, and her reinterpretation of Manet. Also, David Bianculli reviews the new documentary Beatles '64.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Summary

In this episode of Fresh Air, Mickalene Thomas highlights the representation of Black women in her art, asserting their importance beyond supportive roles and challenging traditional beauty standards. Her exhibition 'All About Love' features various artworks that celebrate Black women's narratives, inspired by her family and identity. Thomas also discusses her reinterpretation of Manet's work to emphasize women's empowerment and community. Additionally, she reflects on her artistic journey, the influence of Carrie Mae Weems, and the significance of visibility in art. The episode also includes a review of the documentary 'Beatles '64', highlighting the band's cultural impact.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Artist Mickalene Thomas Gives Black Women Their Flowers) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

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00:00:47 Speaker_08
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00:01:56 Speaker_10
This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley, and today my guest is multidisciplinary artist Mickalene Thomas. In Thomas's art, black women are front and center.

00:02:07 Speaker_10
Her subjects are often at leisure, resting on couches and chairs, sometimes clothed, sometimes fully nude, accentuated by rhinestones and rich, colorful patterns.

00:02:18 Speaker_10
The scale of her paintings, often made of unconventional materials like glitter, sequins, and yarn, makes them feel larger than life, with the eyes of her subjects gazing directly at us.

00:02:30 Speaker_10
Thomas's art made me think about the slew of recent articles in the New York Times, Associated Press, Teen Vogue, and others that delve into the sentiment many black women felt after the outcome of the presidential race.

00:02:43 Speaker_10
One headline read, Disillusioned by the election, some black women are deciding to rest. Thomas's art showcases Black women, not in servitude as often depicted in fine art, but at leisure, claiming space.

00:02:57 Speaker_10
She often recasts scenes from the 19th century French paintings, centering Black sensuality and power.

00:03:03 Speaker_10
And she's also collaborated with singer Solange for an album cover, and she painted the first individual portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama, which was displayed at the National Portrait Gallery.

00:03:15 Speaker_10
Her latest exhibition, All About Love, is midway through an international tour with stops in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and France.

00:03:24 Speaker_10
It features 50 paintings, collages, and photography spanning over two decades, inspired by the women in her life, including her mother, who died in 2012.

00:03:34 Speaker_10
Mickalene Thomas, welcome to Fresh Air, and I know you're battling a cold, so I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us with this raging cold.

00:03:44 Speaker_03
Thank you so much for having me. Hopefully I'm not too congested.

00:03:49 Speaker_10
I want to talk about this latest conversation that many Black women are having, because as we know, Black women sit at this intersection of race and gender, which for better or worse, actually means that our existence is political.

00:04:03 Speaker_10
And I'm just wondering, as an artist whose muses are Black women, how would you describe your art and the messages that it's conveying?

00:04:12 Speaker_03
I think I would describe my art as radically shifting notions of beauty by claiming space that has been often not have us on the platform as the leading character. We've been supportive characters for far too long.

00:04:37 Speaker_03
historical images and that my art gives black women their flowers and let them know that they are the leading role and validating that. And so there's intersections of using and juxtaposing historical tropes, but also

00:05:02 Speaker_03
disrupting and breaking sort of down those notions of beauty, of ideation that is hold to what is beauty, right? And so for me, I just look around my community within my world and started with my mother.

00:05:22 Speaker_10
You grew up in Camden, New Jersey, about 15 minutes from the Barnes in Philadelphia, where your latest exhibit is showing. And for those who don't know, that museum is really steeped in the classics.

00:05:37 Speaker_10
It prides itself in showing the world's finest artists. So Matisse and Picasso are shown there.

00:05:45 Speaker_10
Your art has been shown worldwide, but what does it mean for you to have your work shown at a place like the Barnes, just really not too far from where you grew up?

00:05:57 Speaker_03
Yeah, I think the Barnes as an institution has always been committed to a particular community engagement, and it always has been about the art and the artists.

00:06:10 Speaker_03
But for this exhibition to be 15 minutes away from my family, I mean, it was, to be quite honest, like, I was very anxious and nervous about it.

00:06:23 Speaker_03
Mainly because, yeah, because most of my family members were going to see my work for the first time in person. Like, my aunts and uncles, my cousins.

00:06:38 Speaker_10
They had never seen it.

00:06:39 Speaker_03
Yeah, even my father showed up. My brothers brought my father. So, and a lot of times, you know, people have their own understanding of art.

00:06:52 Speaker_03
And sometimes, you know, art can be a little elitist and we kind of go off and do things and it's conceptual and, you know, visually you might not understand. And some of them were going to see my mother and reposed in the nude.

00:07:07 Speaker_03
They'll see me repose, then recline, then a nude. And they may go, why are you doing that? Why are you showing all that? Why are you exposing yourself? You know?

00:07:20 Speaker_10
Yeah. I think it's so interesting, you know, artists who create work and the world sees it.

00:07:26 Speaker_10
I mean, the world sees your nude body and your mother in repose, but those who are the closest, you feel like there's the most anxiety around showing it to them. What has been their reaction?

00:07:39 Speaker_03
Well, one of my cousins was like, why are you going to go and show your mom that way? And I said, well, you know, my mother loves being shown that way. She actually gave me the permission to photograph her exposed.

00:07:56 Speaker_03
And so I think for them, they were so proud and excited to just be a part of it. Most of them came to the opening night, which was a gala event.

00:08:13 Speaker_03
extravaganza, you know, it's like very just like colorful and just lots of different types of people and the music and the energy. So I think for them to experience that part of my life made them feel special.

00:08:32 Speaker_03
Because I admit, I haven't always been open to sharing that part of my life.

00:08:38 Speaker_10
How did it feel for you to have them receive it?

00:08:41 Speaker_03
Freeing, it felt freeing and it felt supportive. And just to see the smiles. My brother stood in front of one of the paintings of my mother titled Dim All the Lights. She's wearing a red and black sweater and her hands are on the side.

00:09:03 Speaker_03
And it was quite beautiful to watch him engage with the painting, but he stood there just, and I was behind him speaking with other family members, but I was watching him on the side, and he kept gesturing the same movement as her for a long time.

00:09:24 Speaker_03
And then he turned around and said, that's her, I know that stand, I know that's her, that's what she does. And that just made me feel so, and he had this glow and this light on his face.

00:09:38 Speaker_03
And I think for him, you know, my mother's birthday was coming up. So it was like this energy and my mother's birthday, October 27th. The opening was October 18th. So I think it was this this energy. She was she was there. Right.

00:09:54 Speaker_03
And he there was this moment that you had to witness that you could see he was connecting to her.

00:10:01 Speaker_10
For a span of time, you actually had museums that were resistant to showing your work. And you believe that it had to do not with the subject matter, but how your subject matter was presented, like how you were presenting the black body.

00:10:20 Speaker_10
Can you say more about that?

00:10:21 Speaker_03
Yeah, I think still today, I still believe, based on my experiences as an artist, that institutions are not comfortable with the nude black body. If it's not

00:10:42 Speaker_03
stereotypically presented in ways of, I think I present the nude black body in a way of just like celebrating and honoring and putting forth like all of the strong qualities. I think unless it's about trauma.

00:11:05 Speaker_10
Trauma or I think you've said like servitude.

00:11:09 Speaker_03
Servitude, yeah. Or entertainment, yeah. And I think the gesturing of us being performative for an audience is still the notions that they boxes in or compartmentalize some visual artists.

00:11:32 Speaker_10
I found this to be like an interesting idea when you brought this up because it was something that I hadn't thought about when you said this.

00:11:39 Speaker_10
I thought, well, I've seen lots of art where there are black bodies, nude black bodies, but what's different about yours, once I reflected on what you're saying, is that, so for instance, there's a painting of a black woman who's nude and she's leaning back in a chair.

00:11:58 Speaker_10
like people can interpret that as sexual, but it's not sexual. It's just a body leaning back on a chair. And it's also not performative in the entertainment sense either. It just is.

00:12:12 Speaker_03
It just is. And it's the state of resting, the state of being, the state of existing and rooted and grounded in that space, I think is somewhat threatening to people. of the ownership of it, taking accountability for their own space.

00:12:33 Speaker_03
I think when that is exuded, that sense of strength is oftentimes kind of felt with aggression or a threat. I've had people say, oh, your images, the women are very confronting. And I said, their gaze is very confronting.

00:12:54 Speaker_10
Because you're right, because many of your subjects are looking right at you, like straight out at you.

00:13:01 Speaker_03
They're looking straight out at, they're demanding the space. They're not demanding to be validated. They're just letting you know that they're there. But with all that too, there's still, you know, the other side is, vulnerability and sensitivity.

00:13:20 Speaker_03
And I think it's just one-sided if you're going to look at it as that the women are confronting you. But I think that comes from their understanding. If you approach an image, I can't control what you bring to it.

00:13:40 Speaker_03
because you're bringing these ideas of what you think of black women when they're sort of seated in the position of all knowingness.

00:13:53 Speaker_03
But we have been, we sat on thrones before, and I think we've been queens and kings, and I think more of those images are now being put forth and celebrated, which is incredible, I love seeing that.

00:14:10 Speaker_10
some of your works, they also directly reference scenes from your own life, but also classic compositions from the fine art canon. So there's your interpretation of the 1862 French painting, Luncheon in the Grass.

00:14:27 Speaker_10
You take those paintings and then turn them into black representations. Do you remember how that idea in particular to take on Luncheon in the Grass came about?

00:14:37 Speaker_03
Yeah, I do. An idea I had, I was already working with the images.

00:14:46 Speaker_03
I've seen like Renee Cox, there's been a lot of artists who work with Luncheon in Grass as a concept of shifting sort of the paradigm of sort of the black bodies and sort of these Western canon ideas.

00:15:03 Speaker_03
of histories and I wanted to lie myself and sort of, it was through actually Romare Bearden that I started thinking about Luncheoning in the Grass and thinking about what it would mean to have three black women seated in this position.

00:15:26 Speaker_03
And it came from a commission that was presented to me by Klaus Biesenbach. At the time, he was the curator of photography and media at MoMA, and also the director of MoMA PS1.

00:15:45 Speaker_03
And so he commissioned me to present a body of work in the window of the modern. And I immediately knew when I saw the space that I wanted to do La Dejeuner. One, because of the opportunity of the space that it was going to be located.

00:16:07 Speaker_03
Two, because I had the opportunity for the first time to shoot sites specifically at the MoMA and the sculpture garden with the Matisse in the background. And three, I knew that many people would see this.

00:16:25 Speaker_03
And then it was going to be my largest painting to that date. At that point, I was only working like four by five or four feet by five feet or like no larger than six feet.

00:16:39 Speaker_10
And how large was this?

00:16:40 Speaker_03
This was 10 by 20 feet.

00:16:43 Speaker_10
For those who don't know Luncheon in the Grass, can you explain what that painting is and who the original subjects of the painting were?

00:16:50 Speaker_03
Oh, Lunching in of the Grass, La Déjeuner sur l'herbe by Manet. And it was a very provocative painting, large oil painting of three figures, but it's actually four figures. Oftentimes they always speak about lunching into the grass with

00:17:10 Speaker_03
three figures, but there's a fourth figure because there's one person that's bathing in the back.

00:17:15 Speaker_03
And I think there's one figure that depicts a female nude, and then the kind of half-dressed female bather in the back that's often removed when it's remade.

00:17:29 Speaker_03
Three main figures on a picnic, and it's a woman seated with two dressed men, fully dressed men, I guess. that really was, at the time, very controversial. Because to have a painting that sort of depicts this nude woman just in leisure at a picnic.

00:17:54 Speaker_03
Right, right, yes. It's like, what is going on here?

00:17:59 Speaker_10
And then to recreate it where there's three black women.

00:18:01 Speaker_03
Yes, but to recreate it with three black women who are fully dressed. But this particular painting made Edouard Manet, very famous, because it was very controversy and it's an incredible work that is in France and is still there.

00:18:22 Speaker_03
I think it's at the Musée d'Orsay. I decided to reinterpret or reclaim the space with empowering the one woman

00:18:35 Speaker_03
are the half-dressed woman, the bather, and the one woman undressed as three powerful women who are fully clothed, seated, and not at a picnic, just lounging. and giving each other their flowers.

00:18:49 Speaker_03
And I thought that was very important for me, as you see her handing flowers.

00:18:54 Speaker_03
As a way, for me, as black women seeing each other, as a sisterhood of community, I think that's mostly what I wanted to convey, sort of this bond, this sisterhood, this love between black women that I grew up experiencing

00:19:12 Speaker_10
What was the reaction from folks?

00:19:15 Speaker_03
Oh my gosh, I think if Instagram was around then I probably would have had a million followers.

00:19:22 Speaker_10
Yeah, because this was what year?

00:19:27 Speaker_03
It was in 2010. It was 2010. And it stayed at the modern window for about two years. And I think the modern kept it there because they kept saying that it was bringing a large demographic of people into the museum, which was amazing.

00:19:46 Speaker_03
It was 53rd Street, you walk by, you look like, what is this? And I think people expected to see more inside.

00:19:55 Speaker_10
But they weren't getting more of that. But it just speaks to what you had been told, though, about the desire to see black art.

00:20:02 Speaker_03
Yeah. You know, we have to see images of ourselves. I mean, you go through a lot of the different spaces and you just, you know, unless you go to the specified or spaces of African art or Egyptian art, then you start to see elements of yourself.

00:20:25 Speaker_03
And this is just with their permanent collections. now they're starting to realize that there have been gaps and they're collecting histories. Right.

00:20:38 Speaker_10
That's really interesting in thinking about how art plays such a role and like it's a historical imprint.

00:20:45 Speaker_03
It is. I mean, for me, I have to say that art, I would, I think that art has saved my life for sure. You know, growing up, going to after-school programs at the Newark Museum. It was like, for me, this safe haven, this comfort, this refuge.

00:21:07 Speaker_03
I love going there after school.

00:21:10 Speaker_03
I love doing all the craft projects, the paper mache, you know, exploring different ways of making self-portraits or building houses with popsicle sticks and all of those things that you were doing or like, you know, the taller paper tubes and, you know, making constructions, you know.

00:21:33 Speaker_10
It was an outlet but it wasn't like a career path for you back then.

00:21:41 Speaker_03
Not at that time. For me it was just an outlet, a way of expressing myself but also a place to go after school until my mother got off of work.

00:21:53 Speaker_10
Our guest today is multidisciplinary artist, Mickalene Thomas. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air.

00:22:01 Speaker_07
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00:23:21 Speaker_10
Your work is so layered. You use the collage, as we talked about, but sequins and rhinestones. And at first, you were using those materials because you didn't have the money for paint. But you've continued to use them.

00:23:36 Speaker_03
Yeah, so when I was in Pratt, I couldn't afford oil paint. I would rummage often through the recycled stretcher bins and gather my materials from that.

00:23:53 Speaker_03
All I could afford was craft materials because they were cheaper than oil paint, like felt and different fabrics and glitter. It was cheaper than tubes of oil paint.

00:24:07 Speaker_03
I gravitated towards those materials because they were accessible and affordable for me. But what they did was open up a way of expressing myself. But then when I also, to note that during that time, it was the sensation show. at Brooklyn Museum.

00:24:26 Speaker_03
So you had all of these great Britain artists that were showing at the Sensation Show, and they were using all kinds of materials from like chrysophele, elephant dung, and you know, you had Tracey Emin personally tell a story, you know, making a tent out of like felt and canvas and all kind of material.

00:24:48 Speaker_03
And so I think seeing exhibitions like that really were paramount. But, yeah, there was a struggle completing some assignments because some you had to use oil paint or some you had to use the traditional materials to make the art.

00:25:07 Speaker_10
And what would you do to get those?

00:25:09 Speaker_03
I would borrow or, you know, some of the, my peers were, they were good. They were like, oh, yeah, he used some of this. People weren't too stingy or trying to keep you away from that. But I think we all were working and they saw that I was

00:25:24 Speaker_03
in my studio all the time. And so sometimes people throw away tubes of paint because they think it's not good and you just cut it open, it's still paint in there.

00:25:35 Speaker_10
Right, right. There's still so much paint when you open that up inside.

00:25:37 Speaker_03
It's kind of like, you know, like, you know, toothpaste, you know. So I would, you know, take an exacto knife and cut it down the middle and just open it up. And it's kind of like with some of the terp medium, just use some of what I had.

00:25:52 Speaker_10
I want to talk about your entry for a moment into art because growing up, although you did art as a hobby, you didn't know that you actually wanted to be an artist, but some very pivotal things happened to you early in life when you were around 17 or so.

00:26:09 Speaker_10
How did you find your way into the art world?

00:26:13 Speaker_03
Well, when I was very young, about 16 going on to 17. I was going through my own transformation of My identity, sexually, my mother was struggling with her addiction.

00:26:33 Speaker_03
I was living with my grandmother, my father's mother, who I was very close with up until she passed. And I fell in love, and so I moved to Portland, Oregon with my girlfriend at the time. and end up going to a high school in Portland.

00:26:55 Speaker_03
And after living there with her probably about three years, we separated. She moves back with her family. I decided that I wanted to stay. My mother came to visit me to confirm that I wanted to stay. And I said, yeah, I was,

00:27:18 Speaker_03
living in Portland, decided to go to Portland State for a couple of years, and that's when I found interest in pre-law and theater arts.

00:27:31 Speaker_10
That just says so much about you. Seventeen years old, not even done with high school, you're going to move across the country to Portland, Oregon from New Jersey. Very different place.

00:27:41 Speaker_10
But during that time period, you discovered artist and photographer Carrie Mae Weems. Can you take us there to when you first encountered her work and what it was about her work that really ignited you as this pre-law theater student?

00:27:57 Speaker_03
Yeah. While I was living in Portland, after realizing that I couldn't really afford college and that I needed to work, I started working at Davis Wright Tremaine Law Firm. started as a file clerk and document clerk.

00:28:17 Speaker_03
And a good friend of mine who was a photographer, Christopher Stark, had just returned from his internship with Nan Golden. And while he was in New York, he learned about all of these photographers.

00:28:33 Speaker_03
Carrie Mae Weems was one of the photographers he learned about. So when he came back to Portland, Ironically, Carrie Mae Weems had a show up at Portland Art Museum, and he said, you must see this photographer's work.

00:28:50 Speaker_03
I know you're going to connect with it. And so I went with him to see Carrie Mae Weems' show at the Portland Art Museum.

00:29:00 Speaker_10
And describe for people who don't know Carrie Mae Weems what her art articulates. Like it really does showcase like everyday life.

00:29:12 Speaker_03
Her art is a series of photographs that really depicting sort of the black woman she's known for her earlier works of the Kitchen Table series.

00:29:25 Speaker_03
And that's the work that I first saw at the Portland Art Museum, was her series of photographs, which reminded me of my own family and myself. I just remember standing in front of those photographs and seeing myself.

00:29:42 Speaker_03
And I never felt that way before in front of art. And that was because I saw myself in the image. I saw myself as that little girl sitting at the table. I saw the woman as my mother.

00:29:56 Speaker_03
I saw the male as whatever male figure that was in my life at that time, you know. And it was like depicting family, love, domesticity. It was just

00:30:13 Speaker_03
an expression of a black experience that was complex and dimensional that allowed me to understand that there was a power with the image with black people in it. I kept going back to the exhibit after I went with my friend. Really?

00:30:36 Speaker_03
How many times did you go? Do you remember? Probably about four or five times until it closed. And then I also bought a stack of the postcards of the table series and the Mirror Mirror and went to the art store to grab some supplies of Reeves BFK

00:31:02 Speaker_03
paper and some oil pastels and used Carrie Mae Weebs postcards, photographic images as references and for like some of my drawings, just like looking at them.

00:31:17 Speaker_10
Was that the first time when you started to consider that art could be a profession?

00:31:22 Speaker_03
Yeah. And then I was surrounded by artists in Portland who was embarking on that as a profession.

00:31:32 Speaker_10
If you're just joining us, my guest is multidisciplinary artist Mickalene Thomas. She has a new art exhibit at the Barnes in Philadelphia that showcases 50 paintings, collages, and photography that Thomas has created over the last two decades.

00:31:48 Speaker_10
We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air.

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00:32:59 Speaker_10
Before your mother died, you had a chance to ask her a series of questions about your life growing up. You've alluded to her drug use. You also found out, though, that she sold drugs. And that was part of what afforded the life that you all had.

00:33:17 Speaker_10
It was modest, but you also always had nice things. And what was the story that you grew up with and then the one that you came to understand is true?

00:33:26 Speaker_03
I'm glad you asked this question because it wasn't like there was a story that I grew up with. It was a reality that I grew up with. You know, my brother and I lived in Hillside and a house.

00:33:40 Speaker_03
We had our own room and it was decorated the way any kid would want their room. You know, we had like the latest things all the time. My mother drove a Cadillac Seville, which was like at that time an expensive car.

00:33:58 Speaker_03
And my mother was taking care of the family in South Jersey, whether it was helping family members out with rent or medical bills or whatever was needed. That's what my mother was doing.

00:34:12 Speaker_03
At that point, she was involved and engaged to a drug dealer, and then he eventually got caught. And so I guess at some point, my mother felt the responsibility to maintain things. And so she was selling the drugs with some other people in her life.

00:34:38 Speaker_10
What did it mean for you to know and understand it?

00:34:42 Speaker_03
So I didn't know any of this until about 12 years ago. So a late adult. And because my mother kept She kept a lot from me and my brother. She even kept the abuse that my father did in their relationship away from me and my brother.

00:35:00 Speaker_03
She never talked about that.

00:35:02 Speaker_10
What did it mean for you to find out all of this?

00:35:08 Speaker_03
It was devastating at first because I felt like there was a part of my life that was a lie. I didn't understand it. I had to go back in my own mind to try to figure out but maybe understand why I was very shy to share things.

00:35:25 Speaker_10
I wanted to ask you, as part of your art practice, you posed your mom as Pam Greer. Yes.

00:35:33 Speaker_03
That was my first set of photographs that I did within my class with David Hilliard at Yale.

00:35:39 Speaker_10
What did Pam Greer represent?

00:35:43 Speaker_03
Oh, sexiness, strong, unapologetic. beauty, vigilante, savior, goddess.

00:35:54 Speaker_10
I thought that was so like, just even reading about it, I just, in the context of your mother's story, was really powerful because your mom, she was all of those things to you. She was also an aspiring model, but

00:36:14 Speaker_10
She modeled for a while, but she never quite got the success or fame that she wanted. She never really felt understood.

00:36:20 Speaker_03
No, she didn't. And I think my mother, although she was very strong, I think unfortunately, which I think happens to a lot of women who are abused, they're robbed and things are stolen from them. And that's a level of confidence.

00:36:43 Speaker_03
So it was always manifesting in her life in different ways. And so I don't think she knew how to get over that. And so that opportunity for her to be a successful model when that was also an opportunity that she lost.

00:37:13 Speaker_03
I think that was something that settled in her, that destroyed her a little. And I think that's part of my understanding as an adult, what might have led her to do some of the drugs she did, the addiction.

00:37:31 Speaker_10
Is it true that you're near the age that your mother was when You started photographing her?

00:37:36 Speaker_03
Yes, I am. And I feel like she's definitely always around me. I know that for sure. Like the other day is like I sat down in a certain way and I felt like I was sitting like my mother. I was like, oh, my mother sits like that. Like I felt her.

00:37:55 Speaker_10
Do you see her in the mirror when you look at yourself?

00:37:58 Speaker_03
Oh, yes. And I love it now. Before I grew up, as a kid not looking like her and always covet the fact that I was like, why don't I look like my mother?

00:38:08 Speaker_03
And I had a cousin who looked like her and they used to always mistake my cousin for my mother's daughter, which really kind of like messed me up as a child. But now when I look in the mirror, I was just like, ah, there you are.

00:38:28 Speaker_10
Your mom got to see a lot of your art before she passed.

00:38:32 Speaker_03
Oh yeah, she's got to see it, experience it, celebrate it. She was celebrated for it. She loved the fact that she was a part of my art. She loved coming to the openings. She loved coming to my friends' openings.

00:38:48 Speaker_03
She never, when I decided I wanted to be an artist, she never looked at it as like, now why are you wanting to go and do that? Some of those things were in my head. But she never vocalized that.

00:39:00 Speaker_03
She was a group supportive of dance and music and all things, theater. I mean, that's one of the things we shared.

00:39:11 Speaker_10
Michaelene Thomas, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you. Mickalene Thomas is a multidisciplinary visual artist. Her latest exhibition, All About Love, is on view at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.

00:39:26 Speaker_10
Coming up, TV critic David Bianculli reviews the new documentary, Beatles 64. This is fresh air.

00:39:32 Speaker_09
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00:40:30 Speaker_10
Disney Plus, which already gave us the three-part Beatles documentary Get Back and the restored version of their Let It Be film, has another Beatles documentary to present called Beatles 64.

00:40:43 Speaker_10
It covers a very short but significant period in the group's history. TV critic David Bianculli has this review.

00:40:55 Speaker_02
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight, live from New York, The Ed Sullivan Show.

00:41:01 Speaker_11
60 years later, what can a new film say or show about the Beatles' first trip to America that isn't already familiar or that is presented in a significantly different fashion? As it turns out, quite a lot.

00:41:14 Speaker_11
Beatles 64, the new documentary presented by Disney Plus, works really well at exploring and explaining an intense two-week period in musical and cultural history.

00:41:26 Speaker_11
Director David Tedeschi starts his film with the group's first trip to New York, landing at the newly renamed John F. Kennedy Airport on February 7th, and ends with their return to Liverpool 15 days later.

00:41:39 Speaker_11
In between, they holed up at the Plaza Hotel, reached 73 million viewers on their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, played their first U.S.

00:41:48 Speaker_11
concert in Washington, D.C., did a second live Ed Sullivan Show from Miami, and flew back home triumphant, leaving America in the first giant wave of Beatlemania.

00:42:00 Speaker_11
Beatles 64, the film, benefits greatly from behind-the-scenes and fans-eye-view footage shot at the time by the Maysles brothers, Albert and David, who also famously shot film of early Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones at Altamont, and Little Edie and Big Edie at Grey Gardens.

00:42:18 Speaker_11
The group's first press conference at JFK has the press trying to make fun of the Beatles or treat them as novelties. But the four lads from Liverpool instantly win them over.

00:42:29 Speaker_11
When one reporter repeats the accusation that the Beatles are nothing but four Elvis Presleys, Ringo Starr wiggles his pelvis in response, and John Lennon follows, to raucous laughter from the reporters.

00:42:41 Speaker_11
From the very start, they treat the press not as something to fear, but something to play.

00:42:48 Speaker_00
Could you please sing something?

00:42:51 Speaker_02
No! There's some doubt that you can sing. No, we need money first. Our psychiatrist has recently sent you nothing but four Elvis Presleys. Oh, it's not true, it's not true! What do you think your music does for these people?

00:43:09 Speaker_02
Uh, well... Pleases them, I think. Well, they must do, because they're buying it. Why does it excite them so much? We don't know, really. If we knew, we'd form another group and be managers.

00:43:20 Speaker_11
Vintage interview and performance clips are collected and presented artfully. George Harrison, in an interview from the 90s, explains why the Beatles hit America and the press the way they did.

00:43:31 Speaker_14
The Beatles were very, I mean, they actually were funny. Everybody in Liverpool thinks they're a comedian. I mean, that's a well-known fact.

00:43:40 Speaker_14
And all you have to do is drive up there and go through the Mersey Tunnel and the guy on the toll booth is a comedian, you know, they all are.

00:43:50 Speaker_14
had that kind of bred and born into us and when you just transposed it into New York or somewhere it was it was great. I mean we were just being hard-faced really and they loved it.

00:44:04 Speaker_00
And do you think it was being made even stronger by the fact there were four of you bouncing off one another?

00:44:09 Speaker_14
Absolutely, yeah. You just dried up and somebody else was already there with another fab quip.

00:44:15 Speaker_11
Another wonderful vintage interview from a decade ago has singer Ronnie Spector talking about how she and the Ronettes helped the Beatles escape from the Plaza Hotel, which was surrounded by a mob of adoring teenage fans.

00:44:28 Speaker_01
I'll tell you the truth. They had to escape. They were prisoners. So I got a limousine. We went down the back stairs and went to Harlem. I said, I'm taking you to Harlem. Nobody will notice you up there. And they didn't.

00:44:38 Speaker_01
They thought they were a bunch of Spanish dorks. because it's Spanish Harlem. So they didn't pay them any mind. We went into Sherman's Barbecue, it was called, 151st in Amsterdam. They went in and they loved it because nobody recognized them.

00:44:52 Speaker_01
You know, the black guys are eating their ribs and the Spanish guys, and nobody paid them any attention. And it was great. They loved that, that nobody paid them any attention. See how sweet they were? They didn't care about stardom so much.

00:45:07 Speaker_01
Oh, we're going to be on Ed Sullivan. They said, Ronnie, who's Ed Sullivan?

00:45:11 Speaker_11
The film features new interviews as well. One of the film's producers, Martin Scorsese, conducts separate interviews with Paul McCartney and Ringo.

00:45:20 Speaker_11
McCartney is filmed at his Brooklyn photographic exhibit from earlier this year, where he points out one of his favorite photos that he took during those two wild weeks.

00:45:30 Speaker_11
The Beatles are relaxing poolside in Miami, and George is being handed a drink by a young woman.

00:45:36 Speaker_13
Liverpool guys, 15 years after World War II, and we're now here in Miami. This is the one that sums up the good life in Florida.

00:45:49 Speaker_13
He's got his shades on, he's got the sunshine, he's got his drink, and he's got the girl in the yellow bikini delivering it to him.

00:45:59 Speaker_11
Instead of emphasizing the very familiar Ed Sullivan footage, Beatles 64 instead presents complete songs from the much rarer Washington D.C. performance, which was filmed in the round in a boxing ring for a closed-circuit TV presentation.

00:46:15 Speaker_11
Giles Martin, the son of Beatles producer George Martin, remixed the music, and it sounds great. One of the young people in the audience that day was film director David Lynch, who talks about it.

00:46:27 Speaker_15
I was in high school. I lived in Alexandria, Virginia. I was into rock and roll music, mainly Elvis Presley, who brought rock and roll music to the world, to me anyway. I ended up going to this concert.

00:46:44 Speaker_15
I didn't really have any idea that it was the first concert. I don't know. I didn't have any idea how big this event was. And it was in a gigantic place where they had boxing matches. The Beatles were in the boxing ring.

00:47:02 Speaker_15
It was so loud, you can't believe.

00:47:17 Speaker_04
Yeah.

00:47:23 Speaker_11
Other fresh stories come from such people as Jamie Bernstein, the daughter of Leonard Bernstein, record producer Jack Douglas, who tells a fabulous story about John Lennon, and Motown singer Smokey Robinson, who talks of the importance of the Beatles covering one of his songs.

00:47:40 Speaker_11
A year or so later, he'd return the favor on national television by singing Yesterday with the Miracles. They were the first white group that I had ever heard in my life.

00:47:50 Speaker_12
the first white artist ever of their magnitude that I ever heard in my life say, yeah, we grew up listening to black music. We love Motown. We listen to black music. We don't love this person. No other white artists had ever said that.

00:48:06 Speaker_11
Not in any one of magnitude until the Beatles said that. By collecting the footage, gathering the stories, and presenting very generous samples of the songs, Beatles 64 makes it clear why the Beatles made such an impact.

00:48:20 Speaker_11
and why the group and its music continue to not only be remembered, but revered.

00:48:26 Speaker_10
David Bianculli is professor of television studies at Rowan University. He's working on a book about the visual artistry of the Beatles. He reviewed Beatles 64, which is now streaming on Disney+.

00:48:40 Speaker_10
Tomorrow on Fresh Air, Donald Trump has rolled out high-level appointments at a dizzying speed.

00:48:46 Speaker_10
We talk with economist David Wessel about the team he's picked and what to expect from his plans to raise tariffs, cut taxes, deport immigrants, slash spending, and abolish thousands of government regulations. I hope you can join us.

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To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.

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