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:



Flutter
© » KADIST

Zarouhie Abdalian

2010

The first iteration of Flutter was specifically conceived for the Pro Arts Gallery space in Oakland in 2010, viewable from the public space of a sidewalk, and the version acquired by the Kadist Collection is an adaptation of it...

Untitled
© » KADIST

Toyin Ojih Odutola

2015

As she traces the same shape again and again, Ojih Odutola’s lines become darker and deeper, sometimes pushed to the point where their blackness becomes luminous...

Baobab
© » KADIST

Tacita Dean

2001

The photographic quality of the film Baobab is not only the result of a highly sophisticated use of black and white and light, but also of the way in which each tree is characterized as an individual, creating in the end a series of portraits...

Untitled (Superman)
© » KADIST

Raymond Pettibon

2005

The five works included in the Kadist Collection are representative of Pettibon’s complex drawings which are much more narrative than comics or cartoon...

One Must
© » KADIST

John Baldessari

1997

In One Must , an image of a pair of scissors, accompanied by the words of work’s title, poses an ominous question about the relationship between the image and the text...

Serious Games 3, Immersion
© » KADIST

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...

Untitled
© » KADIST

Martin Kippenberger

1989

Untitled is a work on paper by Martin Kippenberger comprised of several seemingly disparate elements: cut-out images of a group of dancers, a japanese ceramic vase, and a pair of legs, are all combined with gestural, hand-drawn traces and additional elements such as a candy wrapper from a hotel in Monte Carlo and a statistical form from a federal government office in Wiesbaden, Germany...

The Parle Ment Metal Woman Welcoming You
© » KADIST

Laure Prouvost

2017

The Parle Ment Metal Woman Welcoming You is a character originated from a series of works combining sculpture and video with a specific role— lying on the floor playing a romantic elevator tune, this Metal Woman welcomes and flirts with viewers in the space where she is posed...

The American War
© » KADIST

Harrell Fletcher

2005

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...

Sal Sem Carne
© » KADIST

Cildo Meireles

1975

Meireles, whose work often involves sound, refers to Sal Sem Carne (Salt Without Meat) as a “sound sculpture.” The printed images and sounds recorded on this vinyl record and it’s lithographed sleeve describe the massacre of the Krahó people of Brazil...

Suspension
© » KADIST

Sebastián Díaz Morales

2014

In Suspension a young man is hanging in the air, falling, or perhaps drifting through time and space...

Perro en Tlalpan (Dog in Tlalpan)
© » KADIST

Gabriel Orozco

1992

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

Untitled (San Francisco)
© » KADIST

Edward Kienholz

1984

Untitled (San Francisco) was made in Idaho in 1984 and was facetiously dedicated to Henry Hopkins, the then director of the San Francisco Museum of Art who added “modern” to its name...

Brent Sikkema – Visionary Art Dealer Of Jeffrey Gibson And Kara Walker Murdered
© » ARTLYST

Kara Walker

Brent Sikkema, the Manhattan art dealer renowned for representing artists such as Jeffrey Gibson and Kara Walker found dead The post Brent Sikkema – Visionary Art Dealer Of Jeffrey Gibson And Kara Walker Murdered appeared first on Artlyst ....

7″ Single 'Pop In'
© » KADIST

Martin Kippenberger

1989

7″ Single ‘Pop In’ by Martin Kippenbergher consisting of a vinyl record and a unique artwork drawn by the artist on the record’s sleeve...

8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America
© » KADIST

Kara Walker

2005

In her masterpiece 8 Possible Beginnings or The Creation of African-America , Walker unravels just that, the story of struggle, oppression, escape and the complexities of power dynamics in the history following slave trade in America...