Mark Bradford b. 1961
The social landscapes of society are employed as a medium for multi-medium expression through the work of Abstract Expressionist Mark Bradford. His work stretches massive scale through his landscape mixed medium paintings and marks moments in human history that call the practice of memory and utility into awareness. Mark Bradford is a visual artist and philanthropist who engages discarded materials of modern, urban life. He has utilized the materials found around salons throughout his career, including the paper rectangles, bobby pins, and hair dyes, to create massive abstract and layered paintings. His work is a conscious effort towards the cultural conservation of urban landscapes through abstract visual storytelling. This recycling and reimaging art practice demonstrate a value towards re-telling narratives his way. Bradford discusses his work's casual and approachable nature pulls me in as an abstract artist, a Black abstract artist who attempts to reclaim the narratives of what it means to express their experience through non-figurative work. "For Bradford, abstraction is not opposed to content; it embodies it. Bradford renews the traditions of abstract and materialist painting, demonstrating that freedom from socially prescribed representation is profoundly meaningful in the hands of a black artist".
He is known for drawing inspiration from the world around him, "underground economies, migrant communities, or popular appropriation of abandoned public space—that emerge within a city". Bradford's large-scale paintings are manifestations of his interactions with the built space. He stands a towering 6'8, so naturally, he was very aware of space and architecture. With this additional awareness, Bradford's work considers scale as he's had to develop consciousness between himself and the built environment. His observation of physical environment shapes the way he physically engages it and his social response to it.
Bradford's philanthropic practice also engages a concept of recyclable opportunities by expanding resources to impact the lives of colleagues and community. In 2010, during a partnership with the Getty Museum, Bradford created an educational program as part of the Getty Artist Program.Open Studio is an online resource featuring artist-designed lesson plans for K-12 teachers, with the goal of "making contemporary arts education accessible to teachers and classrooms across the nation and around the world. Authored by noted international artists, Open Studio is a collection of art-making activities that presents the unique perspectives of practicing artists. Each activity is presented as a free, downloadable PDF that includes an artmaking prompt, an artist biography, and images of the artist and works of art by the artist". As a part of his MacArthur Genius Award, the program aims to make contemporary arts education accessible to teachers in classrooms everywhere. Soliciting a cohort of established artists and colleagues to co-facilitate this effort he brought in artists such as Kara Walker to produce a curriculum that creates opportunities for introspection.
In 2016, Bradford founded Art + Practice, a private operating 501(c)3 foundation based in the neighborhood of Leimert Park in South Los Angeles, which supports LA transition-age foster youth ages 18-24. Art + Practice collaborates with a nonprofit social service provider, First Place for Youth, providing the organization rent-free office space to young adults exiting the foster care system, transition into adulthood, by providing job training, housing. Art + Practice differs from most other arts nonprofits in two other important ways: Bradford provides as much of the organization's $1 million annual budget as needed, generally declining grants so that the nonprofit can remain independent and flexible. Secondly, instead of assuming the role of cultural purveyor like many arts institutions and bringing underserved communities to their space, Art+ Practice serves the community through art within the neighborhoods in which the community resides. Leimert Park is also where Bradford worked as a hairstylist in the 1980s and eventually opened his first studio. Bradford's relationship to social location is a return investment on the environment that bred him.
"A+P aspires to be a space where the social aspect of art—the practice of it—puts the art into a context of action."
Bradford's abstract paintings often remind me of future ancient maps of western society, a future retrospect of the ruined landscapes of American cities.In discussion with curator Thelma Golden, Bradford reflects on his series "End Papers' '. He discusses his use of abstraction to convey messages without directly engaging politics that may become associated with his work. "Oftentimes, I rely on the material and the memory of the material to do a bit of the work for me...I also rely on the subject matter to do a little bit of the political work for me. And I also give myself the freedom of abstraction to go wherever I need to go so that I'm not a spokesman for something". Bradford's resistance towards the limitations of defining his art through his experience as a gay Black man represents the unbound freedom of expression to define identity within his own terms. Layers are the context of both his being as an artist and individual. Using end-papers used in salons for perms, Bradford uses paper that he soaks in large tubs of water until the paper feels malleable enough to be manipulated and moved on the canvas. Next, he uses a paint roller to imbed into his grid-like canvas. The bases of his canvases are also significant documents or images such as maps or copies of the US Constitution. Using these documents as his base, he applies layers upon layers of colorful applications of paper in which he peels back once dry, sometimes by hand and other times with a power washer, sanders, drills or knives. This process simultaneously embeds and removes the paper medium, unveiling a collage of speckled distorted imagery. The excavation of this process for each painting rubs away at the surface to reveal the depth of Bradford's inner world.
"I believe that the material I use is socially-it comes from lived use, it comes from a, a work and it comes from space and I pull it into my studio. … but you'll never be able to erase all the memory until it just becomes material”
Two Advances Two Retreats resembles a topographic map where incisions in the terrain appear to be marked by some striated material such as tires to create a grid-like landscape. The light blue hue of nearly uninterrupted space divides three areas: black and pink and blue, red and white, and a streak of yellow just below. It reminds me immediately of a landlocked bay, a landscape you may find in the midwest western US and Canada.
"It's an amalgamation of materials that cling. To the city, you pass by on your way to the metro. While you're riding your bike by it's lodged in your memory. It's the memory once I collected and once I build it up, then oftentimes I tear it down. I create my own archaeological sites on the surface myself"
The scale of these paintings consumes the room but doesn't overwhelm the viewer. The tactile nature of Bradford's work draws the viewer in to understand the materiality and details of the work. I find this aspect admirable. To find the balance between massive scale and viewer intrigue to look closer. Bradford's paintings are analogous to modern society's large, complex issues; the items we cast away become fragments of unresolved social issues that grow larger in scale with each disposal. To abstract discarded items often found in "discarded" or underinvested communities reminds the viewer that they are a part of the wasteland of excess consumerism—making waste visible on the pristine walls of a gallery floor inverses the viewer's concept of trash.
Bradford describes his work as the quiet background within our societal consciousness: "Think about all the white noise out there in the streets: all the beepers and blaring culture—cell phones, amps, chromed-out wheels, and synthesizers. I pick up a lot of that energy in my work, from the posters, which act as memory of things pasted and things past. You can peel away the layers of papers and it's like reading the streets through signs." - Mark Bradford
Through his massive reinterpretations of waste, Mark Bradford visually defines the present and future landscapes. I believe that Bradford's unconscious becomes the conscious driver in the development of these abstractions that expand space and time.
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“About A+P.” About A+P – Art + Practice. Accessed November 9, 2021. https://www.artandpractice.org/about/.
“Arts in Education: Mark Bradford's Open Studio.” Art21 Magazine. Accessed November 9, 2021. http://magazine.art21.org/2010/09/16/arts-in-education-mark-bradfords-open-studio/#.YYnvs9bMLzd.
“Artist Mark Bradford Is Tackling Social Justice in and out of the Studio.” The Washington Post. WP Company, October 10, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/entertainment/mark-bradford/.
“Mark Bradford.” Art21, May 19, 2017. https://art21.org/artist/mark-bradford/.
“Mark Bradford: Pickett's Charge - Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: Smithsonian.” Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden | Smithsonian, October 8, 2021. https://hirshhorn.si.edu/exhibitions/mark-bradford-picketts-charge/.
“Mark Bradford in Conversation with Thelma Golden - YouTube.” Accessed November 9, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NO7T6Zpj9I.
“Meet the Artist: Mark Bradford - Hirshhorn Museum - Youtube.” Accessed November 9, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM5E3T-4U2A.
Enrico on. “VernissageTV Art TV - Mark Bradford: Tomorrow Is Another Day / U.S. Pavilion, Venice Art Biennale 2017.” VernissageTV Art TV - the window to the art world. https://vernissage.tv/2017/05/19/mark-bradford-tomorrow-is-another-day-u-s-pavilion-venice-art-biennale-2017/.