MARK BRADFORD

“I create artwork everyday like it’s going to be at the Wexner Center.”

From END PAPER TO HIGH-END

Mark Bradford fuses culture, class and found materials into contemporary art masterpieces

by Janel St. John

At first sight, you know artist Mark Bradford is no ordinary guy. At 6’8 he towers above everyone else in a room. In casual conversations, he is a brother from around the way. Engage him in a discussion about his paintings, you will find the intellectual. Go a little further - into the processes and mindset of creating an artwork, and you will be mesmerized by his medium, method and message.

Outnumbering the awards… is the positive press coverage, making the artist, somewhat of a media darling. When asked about the magnitude of his first museum survey - Bradford speaks humbly but pointedly. “I create artwork everyday like it’s going to be at the Wexner Center.” Clearly, the enormity of his work ethic is comparable to his largest artwork - the 22-foot high, 64-foot long ark, Mithra, constructed for a New Orleans exhibition in the Lower Ninth Ward.

“He goes into the studio everyday and pressures himself to move his artwork forward,” said Christopher Bedford, Wexner Center curator. Bedford became familiar with Bradford, many years ago, while living and working in LA. At that time, the artist was creating work from his apartment, using found materials. “I got the chance to see the way an artist sees and thinks,” Bedford said. Not only did he curate this exhibition, Bedford brought his works to the attention of the Wexner Center, asking them to consider Bradford for a solo survey. “The show is a chronological account of Mark’s development over ten years,” Bedford said. “The key concepts, recycled themes and ideas - It renders a portrait of a person, through his work.”

Medium and Method

“This rhythm and repetition is very labor intensive and very meditative,” said Bradford, describing his process of using permanent-wave end papers to create an artwork. “I burned the ends of the papers because I couldn’t find them– it was white on white. Then I liked it.” This use of end papers, defines his earlier works. It also defines the environment that gave birth to his artistry.

Born and raised in South Central, Los Angeles, Bradford’s mother owned a beauty salon. “In the 1960’s and 70’s she styled a lot of wigs,” he said. “There was always a monetary association with things that you can create.” A family business, Bradford was frequently recruited to wash heads. After graduating from art school, he gravitated to familiar objects.  “End papers had music and memory of personal places,” he said. “I used what was available, and what was cheap.” He also speaks about his father’s work ethic. “He always worked 3 and 4 jobs,” he said. “Family was always first. He taught me to be observant and focus on what I see.”

It didn’t take Bradford long to see a goldmine. The LA Riots of 1992 produced blocks of burned out lots. Businesses quickly filled this ‘free advertising space’ with billboard ads. To Bradford, these billboards became an endless supply of art material. He describes stripping a wall and rolling up the giant poster  ‘in broad daylight.’  “The lower the income of an area,” he said, “the less policed it is. I couldn’t get merchant posters in Upper Arlington,” he quipped. That is how Bradford created James Brown is Dead, 2007….from a billboard. The actual artwork is more than 22-feet long and marks the singer’s passing in 2006.

.....James Brown is Dead, 2007 Billboard paper, photomechanical reproductions, acrylic gel medium, and additional mixed media, 47 3/4 x 267 inches, The Museum.of Modern Art, New York; purchased with funds provided by Kathy and Richard S. Fuld, Jr., Photo courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York

Scorched Earth, 2006, Billboard paper, photomechanical reproductions, acrylic gel medium, carbon paper, acrylic paint, bleach, and additional mixed media on canvas, 94 1/2 x 118 inches Collection of Dennis and Debra Scholl Photo: Bruce M. White

These billboard sheets have layers of decades of signs, advertisements and handbill flyers. This raw material in the hands of an artistic tour de force with a relentless energy to uncover, has produced extraordinary abstractions. “If you cut a tree, you can tell how old it is,” Bradford said, describing his process of distressing surfaces to create works, while leaving pieces of older material and images to show through. “Life is complex – most people live a layered existence. I’m trying to find a bridge between all the people, places and things.” Bradford’s quest is revealed in the grid-like patterns of many of his works, which form literal maps. It is also an expression of community and experiences. “LA is very racially divided,” he said. “Freeways connect and cut off communities.” The artist lived in all-black South Central, until his family moved to all-white Santa Monica. Bradford floated freely and frequently between both communities.

Therefore, race, culture and class are also constant themes. The dramatic red and black color palette of Scorched Earth, 2006, refers to the fiery end to the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Over the course of three days, a rumor of an assault on a young white woman inflamed racial tensions and ended in the virtual demolition of Greenwood, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, home to 10,000 black families and the country’s most prosperous business community, also known as Black Wall Street. 

A mob of thousands of white men burned more than 30 city blocks to the ground, leaving hundreds of African Americans dead and thousands more homeless.

The all-white Tulsa National Guard unit was called in to respond to what had been reported as a “Negro uprising.” There are conflicting reports about the actions taken by the Tulsa units of the National Guard; black survivors say they dropped a bomb on Greenwood. The arc in the upper left of Bradford’s composition, could reference an attack from the outside, as an organized mass of white rectangles starts to surround the painting’s black and blackened center. The title, is a term frequently used to describe the punishing destruction of war, “I took that moment in history because we’re talking so much about war over there,” Bradford said. “It’s always war that’s happening in the Middle East, not about war on our soil. So I was interested in the ways in which wars reshape territory and reshape land.” 

Other artwork titles express personal and pop culture influences: Enter and Exit the New Negro, 2000 - challenges the status quo and celebrates new opportunity, Burn Baby Burn, 2002  – Bradford’s simply looked out of his LA salon’s  window and described his environment; Black Venus, 2005 – an exploration of an LA neighborhood of wealthy black professionals and Pinocchio Is On Fire, 2010 a new multimedia work conceived for this exhibition. The persona of the recently deceased soul legend, Teddy Pendergrass, is the foundation for this installation which explores various key moments in the history of the black community in South Central LA from the 1980s to the present.