theHotness » Art

Happy 54th Birthday Sade!

theHotness — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:32:36 +0000

Today is Helen Folasade Adu’s Birthday! She’s an incredible 54-years old today! Clearly, legends stay beautiful! As one of our most dynamic, sultry and sweetest soul singers, theHotness wishes her continued success and love. And thanks for putting us big foreheaded sisters squarely and magnificently on the map of beauty.

“Artistically, I have high aspirations. I don’t want to do anything less than the best I can do. I’m not trying to promote an image.” Read more...

Beauty, Booty & Beyonce: Loving My Black Body

theHotness — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 21:08:58 +0000

Over the weekend Beyonce posted the note you see above on her Tumblr page and immediately her Beyhive started swarming. Without realizing or even considering that this may not even be a direct quote from Baby Blue’s momma, folks were in a hizzy over the first sentence. The idea that Beyonce would think, never mind write, that she was ugly had folks scratching their head, hypothesizing all kinds of scenarios. Most bloggers thought this letter Read more...

FLYASPORA: QUEENS

theHotness — Fri, 04 May 2012 21:30:50 +0000

Bawse. Sharp. Foine. Smart. Mahogany. Awkward. Classy. Regal. Erotic. Heard. Loud & Clear. Honey. Sho Nuff. Soft. Sexy. Hard. Foxy. Brown. These are Mickalene’s queens. Shoot, let’s keep it real, these are OUR Queens. Our mamas, our aunties, our sisters, our homegirls, our teachers, our grandmas. us. Crown high. Roots–deep & low. Bout it.

: “Rumble” (from the “Brawling Spitfire Wrestling” series); 2005

Brooklyn-based artist Mickalene Thomas is best known for her photographs and her elaborate Read more...

Mona Lisa Ain’t Never Looked This Good!

theHotness — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 21:59:10 +0000

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...

5 Things We Can Learn From Frida Kahlo

theHotness — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:26:32 +0000

Frida Kahlo– survivor, lover, revolutionary. When broken she reinvented herself. Her body was her canvas that became a site of empowerment for all women. Born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón, Frida was a bonafide Cancer who loved to love and be loved. Tomorrow will mark the 57th anniversary of Frida Kahlo’s death. The defiantly beautiful Mexicana who created some 200 paintings and drawings during her lifetime would’ve turned 104 last Wednesday– her birthday and Read more...

Artist Talk with Wangechi Mutu

theHotness — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 23:21:17 +0000

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...

Scratch & Kiss

theHotness — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 20:02:06 +0000

“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...

High Fashion or Low Class?

theHotness — Wed, 26 May 2010 20:56:36 +0000

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...