Bread and Roses

2012 - Painting (Painting)

Hank Willis Thomas

location: New York, New York
year born: 1976
gender: male
nationality: American
home town: Plainfield, New Jersey

Bread and Roses takes its name from a phrase famously used on picket signs and immortalized by the poet James Oppenheim in 1911. “Bread for all, and Roses, too’—a slogan of the women in the West,” is Oppenheim’s opening line, alluding to the workers’ goal for wages and conditions that would allow them to do more than simply survive. Thomas’ painting includes several black, white, brown, yellow, and red raised fists—clenched and high in the air in the internationally recognized symbol of solidarity, resistance, and unity.


Employing the visual language and terminology of mass media, and appropriating symbols and images from popular culture, Hank Willis Thomas’ work seeks to question and subvert established definitions and positions with regards to personal identity and the narrative of race. Working across installation, photography, video, and media work, Thomas maintains his photo conceptualist roots, primarily taking source material from found photographs and archives. These images form the basis from which the artist seeks to uncover the fallacies that history claims as truth. His work illustrates how the way history is represented and consumed reinforces generalizations surrounding identity, gender, race and ethnicity, and that as an artist he has an opportunity to expose or to revise those histories from the points of view of the oppressed.


Colors:



The American War
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Harrell Fletcher

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The American War , which takes its title from the Vietnamese term for what Americans call the Vietnam War, has toured the United States extensively with the goal of presenting a Vietnamese perspective of that history...

Perro en Tlalpan (Dog in Tlalpan)
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Gabriel Orozco

1992

Gabriel Orozco often documents found situations in the natural or urban landscape...

Condition Report
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Glenn Ligon

2000

Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...

Wall Window or Bar Sign (Insanity is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over and Expecting Different Results)
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Mungo Thomson

2014

Starting with Bruce Nauman’s iconic artwork, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign) , Mungo Thomson’s neon sign is one of a series that replaces Nauman’s quixotic mini-manifesto with aphorisms from ‘recovery’ culture, especially those made popular by alcoholics anonymous...

Oakland Girls
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Pascal Shirley

2006

Like many of Pascal Shirley’s photographs, Oakland Girls aestheticizes a dingy rooftop and a cloudy sky...

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South Africa Righteous Space
© » KADIST

Hank Willis Thomas

2014

South Africa Righteous Space by Hank Willis Thomas is concerned with history and identity, with the way race and ‘blackness’ has not only been informed but deliberately shaped and constructed by various forces – first through colonialism and slavery, and more recently through mass media and advertising – and reminds us of the financial and economic stakes that have always been involved in representations of race....

Condition Report
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Glenn Ligon

2000

Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...

The Left Hand Can't See That the Right Hand is Blind
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Douglas Gordon

2004

Douglas Gordon’s single-channel video The Left Hand Can’t See That The Right Hand is Blind, captures an unfolding scene between two hands in leather gloves—at first seemingly comfortable to be entwined, and later, engaged in a struggle...

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Phenomena
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Yang Xinguang

2009

Although seemingly unadorned at first glance, Yang Xinguang’s sculptural work Phenomena (2009) employs minimalist aesthetics as a means of gesturing towards the various commonalities and conflicts between civilization and the natural world...

Collecting with Purpose – How Nish McCree Is Advancing the Cause of African Art - via APOLLO
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The Ghana-based collector is known for discovering talented artists – but there is a more important mission behind her collecting instincts...

What’s With Those Hilarious Medieval Portrayals of Animals?
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Americans for the Arts Remembers Star of Film, TV, and Stage, Angela Lansbury
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Americans for the Arts Remembers Star of Film, TV, and Stage, Angela Lansbury | Americans for the Arts Jump to navigation Americans for the Arts Arts Action Fund National Arts Marketing Project pARTnership Movement Animating Democracy Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Instagram YouTube Load Picture Home News Room Americans for the Arts Remembers Star of Film, TV, and Stage, Angela Lansbury Hello Guest | Login Americans for the Arts Remembers Star of Film, TV, and Stage, Angela Lansbury Friday, October 14, 2022 Americans for the Arts mourns the loss of beloved Artists Committee member Dame Angela Lansbury , who passed away in her Los Angeles home on October 11, 2022, at the age of 96...

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20
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Chris Wiley

2012

Architectural details become abstracted renderings in Chris Wiley’s inkjet prints 11 and 20 (both 2012)...

Nothing New
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Oded Hirsch

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Oded Hirsch’s video work Nothing New (2012) utilizes seemingly absurdist tropes to raise more trenchant questions about communal action and collective identity in modern day Israel...

Excerpt (Sealed) (Brown)
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Stephen G. Rhodes

2010

For his series of digital collages Excerpt (Sealed)… Rhodes appropriated multiple images from mass media and then sprayed an X on top of their glass and frame...

La Ligne du Temps
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Valeska Soares

2012

Relying on repetition and repurposed materials, Soares works to interrogate time—its measurement, its passing, and its meaning...

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South Africa Righteous Space
© » KADIST

Hank Willis Thomas

2014

South Africa Righteous Space by Hank Willis Thomas is concerned with history and identity, with the way race and ‘blackness’ has not only been informed but deliberately shaped and constructed by various forces – first through colonialism and slavery, and more recently through mass media and advertising – and reminds us of the financial and economic stakes that have always been involved in representations of race....

I Am A Man
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Hank Willis Thomas

2013

The image is borrowed from protests during Civil Rights where African Americans in the south would carry signs with the same message to assert their rights against segregation and racism...

Black Hands, White Cotton
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Hank Willis Thomas

2014

Shot in black and white and printed on a glittery carborundum surface, Black Hands, White Cotton both confronts and abstracts the subject of its title...

Related artist(s) to: Hank Willis Thomas » Abraham Cruzvillegas, » Claire Fontaine, » William E Jones, » Catherine Opie, » Collier Schorr, » Glenn Ligon, » Harun Farocki, » Jens Hoffmann, » Kirsten Pieroth  
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Foreigners Everywhere (Italian)
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Claire Fontaine

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Condition Report
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Glenn Ligon

2000

Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...

In the Collage II (Marie)
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Collier Schorr

2013

In the Collage II (Marie) (2013), Shorr seems to have an ostensibly clear subject, a female subject identified in the work’s title as “Marie,” a slim but athletic woman with brown hair pictured reclining atop a brilliantly white sheet draped against a marbled tan-and-white backdrop...

Serious Games 3, Immersion
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Harun Farocki

2009

For Immersion , Harun Farocki went to visit a research centre near Seattle specialized in the development of virtual realities and computer simulations...

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Danish Collector Jens Faurschou Inaugurates New Outpost in Brooklyn - via The Art Newspaper
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The actors playing The Crown's teen prince heartthrobs
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Kenzo Takada’s Art and Furniture Collection to Be Auctioned - via WWD
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3600 besos por hora
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Humberto Diaz

2002

The two works in the Kadist collection, Observador Pasivo and 3600 besos por hora by Diaz are culled from a vast compilation of videos and performances for the camera...