Kehinde Wiley’s “An Economy of Grace is a study of poise, flyness, beauty, class, glamour and Blackness. And today it will all come to a close.

The women– Homegirls. Ena, Treisha, Shanatavia, Dacia. Brooklyn. Fulton Mall-shopping, Beyonce loving, mothers who take pride in a good manicure. Their poses are based on historical portraits of “society women” by Jacques-Louis David, Thomas Gainsborough and John Singer Sargent. Their clothes– long luxurious gowns reminiscent of neo-classical French romanticism. Read more...

It’s Friday. Flyaspora Friday here at theHotness and we thought we’d titillate your senses with a little fine art. I love these two portraits because they reappropriate what is considered classical, high art and dips them low in a point a view and representation that goes against the grain yet supports the woman I see in the mirror every day. Awol Erizku’s “Girl With A Bamboo Earring” reimagines Johannes Vermeer’s famous “Girl with a Pearl Read more...

“Base what you’re doing on something constructive that has to do with all of us (African-Americans/ Black folk) and not just on money and buying things.” -Elizabeth Catlett Mora

“Art is only important to the extent that it aids in the liberation of our people.” –Elizabeth Catlett Mora

April 29, 2011. It was a beautiful spring Friday and I was at Columbia University attending “Towards An Intellectual History of Black Women”– this no nonsense, spectacular Read more...

theHotness presents…

An Art Walk & Talk

for

KARA WALKER’S

Dust Jackets for the Niggerati–and Supporting Dissertations,
Drawings Submitted Ruefully by Dr. Kara E. Walker

hosted by

Nicole Moore
Founder & Editor, theHotness.com

&

Dexter Wimberly
Director of Communications, Museum for African Art

When:

TODAY – Saturday, June 11, 2011
3:00pm – 5:00pm
Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
530 West 22nd St., NYC

* Afterwards we will continue the conversation over drinks *
@ The Read more...

So Sasha Fierce is rocking the burnt cork, darky look in the March issue of French magazine, L’Officiel Paris and of course she’s got folks’ Vicky Secrets all tied-up in a knotty bunch. The photo—tribal markings, outfit and all—was styled in honor of Nigerian musician and activist Fela Kuti. Personally, I found the photo spread more boring and in bad taste than offensive, but then again it’s gonna take a lot more than Fashion Read more...

Please join theHotness.com’s Nicole Moore and Artist of the Year Wangechi Mutu this Saturday, December 18th at NYC’s Gladstone Gallery for an Artist Talk about Black female body politics, beauty, being “Exotic” and racism.

Wangechi Mutu’s art is much more than cuttin’ & pasting. Her collage summons up ancestral ghosts of dismembered African bodies and futuristic alien goddesses that can leap and bound over breast implants and traditional ideas of beauty. “Females carry the marks, Read more...

I’ve written about photographer and activist Mfon Essien several times since I first interviewed her back in the fall of 2000. I hung out with her for most of that lovely afternoon in her living room. She was battling breast cancer, but that day there were very few signs of struggle or even weakness. We laughed, sipped tea and talked about what it meant to be sexy. For two young Black women this chat Read more...

“The art of living (and loving) is more like wrestling than dancing, insofar as it stands ready against the accidental and unforeseen, and is not apt to fall.”        - Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

When I think of love I think of a force that is all consuming. Beyond all our natural and unnatural senses, LOVE at its best (and worst) strips us, whips us, rocks, knocks and locks us in a powerful space Read more...

For some reason Venus’s provocative tennis outfit at the French Open got me thinking about Sofia Maldonado’s mural on 42nd Street and the uproar it created over whether it was a bold expression of art and culture or a simple promotion of stereotypical images of Black and Latina women. Why and when does art’s imitation of life become so problematic? High art or a low down dirty shame? Clearly it’s not just girls in the Read more...