Mark Bradford's Layered Urban Art | Brilliant Ideas Ep. 76

brilliant ideas powered by Hyundai Motor [Music] when I discover something new it's like when a person buys a new pair of shoes some people take them home some people write in the store they put him on that's totally me I want to put them on right now like right now I will take the old ones and put them in a box and take him home that's how I am in studio you're suddenly introduced to being a part of something bigger than yourself that sense of the monumental but also of our part within it he really very fluidly uses found materials from within the world and he uses those things to incorporate the social and political context directly into his words it's kind of experiential ambiguous poetic and honestly always beautiful mark Bradford is an American artist from Los Angeles known for drawing on the urban environments he uses what he finds around him as material for his multi-layered work he's been chosen to represent the United States in the Venice Biennale perhaps the biggest Commission of any artists career born in 1961 mark spent much of his early years in the hair salon run by his mother in downtown Los Angeles I got called a [ __ ] a lot because I was kind of sensitive creative very much in touch with my emotions I was kept safe that's what I remember the most about before adolescence is kind of safe space really safe it was almost like a collective so I really grew up in this matriarchal society that was pretty much self-sustaining super super powerful and they allowed me to be me Mark's breakthrough paintings made a storm in the art world true to his roots he wove the social fabric of the hair salon into his art you get out of school you're working a trade which is being a hairdresser I want to make artwork and I need material this cheap so necessity kind of makes invention in papers these small 2x2 rectangles that you use for doing perms from from african-american people you do jheri curl there were 50 cents a box I can experiment I can make mistakes there's no way that I could do that with all pain [Music] he's speaking so very directly to black girls and black women all of us knew what that was we all know what it is it was only later that I was able to make sense of those emotional impressions of this really beautiful colorful complicated fragile painting here you have an inspired use of the grid so it's really speaking directly to modernism the hair papers themselves introduced this incredible other social and eventually political content into the work I liked it because it came from the social fabric of life and it came from what I did for a job trying to bring the social back into the studio and then trying to bring the studio out into the socials like it the back-and-forth thing I often view it as as code-switching you know he's able to say like you know I got your girl like we were able to see something in the work but there's also something there for an erudite art world audience it's that layering it's the fact that they both exist but you wouldn't have one without the other being an abstract painter for me was a political act because I I didn't want people to over determine what it meant to be black what it meant to be gay what it meant to be studio in South Central what it meant to grow up and Sam I was like whoa like I need to make this story I don't need a revisionist story I need to keep it complicated and messy and slow Marcos in his early 20s when AIDS hit America the disease affected the lives of thousands of young people in his city for the 80s it was like a Gone Fishing sign when so many people are dying and dealing with the ideas of shame and guilt and the church and all at one time and you are 18 or 19 years old it's hard to process it he invented this beautiful image of the United States scraped back out of the wall the statistics of AIDS infection available as of a couple years prior to the exhibition it's just numbers on a page until you realize that those numbers are connected to people it's like when we drop bombs it's just a map and a little burst until they take pictures on the ground of the people in the homes that they've destroyed and the lives that they've destroyed so you had this map that was made literally out of sanding back through the lobby walls so that all the previous projects that artists had done over the years on that wall kind of came through in their remnants as they had been painted over and then painted on and painted over and painted on [Music] but he also began doing research looking at medical images of AIDS very close up microscopic images of blood of different kinds of bodily fluids and through those very abstract images he found a way into a content that had to do with the body that had to do with the body in crisis I think I do want people to remember people that struggle not just to race it we as a society can do more to not turn our gaze if a person says they're in need [Music] South Central LA is American artist mark Bradford's home turf his studio is based in an old warehouse where he makes paintings and sculptures to be shown all over the world that one was the first one I had never pulled off paper like that and it felt like hanging trees today he's working on a major new commission for the Herschel Museum in Washington DC it's eight huge pieces that adapt imagery from a historic painting the Gettysburg Cyclorama which depicts a key battle in the American Civil War the fabric of the country was being torn apart by two factions this image imbued a lot of those thoughts of kind of tensions and histories laying on top of each other and policy and politic and rope is basically what I draw with it's my hand I'm actually using the rope as a background but this is where the rope was so now that's a memory so that's a memory of the rope and the Rope now is on the top so this is just a trace of it even though I used the Pickett's charge from the Gettysburg Cyclorama III sent it to a billboard company that does these huge big billboards and and and had them kind of use the dot sculpture the dots that she would use to do a billboard imagery so it starts to fall apart and I wanted it to look like billboard you're never supposed to get this close to a billboard so I like the idea that you can get this close and so you can see the pixels and the bad colors and but then we stand back it actually acts like a billboard I want this idea of an infinity too that's why I use a very horizon line I played with the horizon line and I made sure that all the lines were very very horizontal that it just almost like a cyclone that it would twist and twist and twist this is the battle scene the cannon ball made this Big Smoke shape and I really liked and so I pulled it off but I left battle at the bottom you can see the wheel they become abstract paintings in the end but the source material from something that is more politically and socially charged and some of that urgency is still in it it's not done you can't rip it all out I didn't want to rip all of it isn't that what we're always doing is we sort of taking the remnants of the good and the bad of our history of our environment and we're constantly trying to remake rethink pull apart recompose isn't that what we have to do if we want a better world as that kind of continual work at it thinking and walking is something I've always done since I was about six I think and walk for me I have to walk to think sometimes I'll walk the streets to think or walk around the studio I do 7030 or sometimes 6040 which means I work on projects that I'm that are I'm working on and I understand that about 60% of the time 40% of the time I allow myself to just play in the unknown as soon as I discover something new oh my god that opens up the next moves what I've learned from one piece of work I will immediately apply to the next one that's me oh when he discovered that and he applied it to the next one but it's not just from the streets and it's not just from the studio it's a hybrid bringing information from the world bringing the social political psychological whatever things I was interested in using material from the world bringing into my studio adding another kind of psychological and historical fabric on top of it and some all chemical thing happening and it's so it's an it is a work Marc grew up with a strong urge to make arts but for a long time was forced to find other outlets for his creativity Marc paint this on the wall Marc style my hair Marc helped me with my makeup Marc do a little film creativity was something that was always part of my life but it didn't lead anywhere it was just something you've experienced after work my mother was an artist she always had the creativity she just never had the possibility my mother grew up in segregated America she became a hairstylist and she used all of her creativity for that my grandmother was known from being able to sew and draw anything that she saw my uncle would make these comic books so what I realized is that I was the first one that was able to go to art school and kind of formalize it and I gave myself permission to follow my voice and that's what my whole careers been I still give myself permission and no compromise I compromise before you know but not know not what I became an artist no in the spring of 1992 long-standing tensions between the Los Angeles Police Department and the local community boiled over into week-long rioting across the city mark started noticing physical traces this period of civil unrest left on the world around him in 1982 I was still in school so I really hadn't developed a material vocabulary but after the riot it physically changed physicality of the urban environment a lot of plywood barricades went up you would start to paper the one sheets on them and they would become very very thick you didn't have that many before cyclone fencing merchants posters what the merchants posters would always point to was again urgent need we know you're losing your house we're going to give you five cents on the dollar oh well so walking by a sea of merchants posters you immediately knew what was going on in the community bedbugs immigration losing your house you would get this incredible snapshot there almost hidden in plain sight they are part of the cityscape but you wouldn't see them if you don't need them so unless you do need phone minutes to call a loved one in prison or you can't afford the Orkin man and you're looking for an exterminator there was a kind of lack of money invested from the city back and rebuilding that neighborhood so there were lots of posters about different kinds of economies in the neighborhood different jobs different businesses many stories about a recovery that almost happened but in that neighborhood so he would literally scavenge those posters and use a lot of the found text as a way again of embedding a political subtext in the work there is a really very sophisticated interplay of how one material can suggest a whole network of people in a particular place at a particular time and the interesting thing about merchants posters the demographic was very small and the runs were very short and they were gone and then I would sometimes and I started getting I would see a merchant post and I would like it and I saw that's really cool I'm gonna come back next week and gone and all memory of what it was for and who bought into it all gone Los Angeles it's all spread out it's haphazard there's no focal point it has such a wonderful subtlety and there are ways in and out of that aesthetic that are very different mark has one he kind of gets that like a place like la is not very old but it has aspects of that including peeling paper that gives you an emotional quality of something having taken place history can be very long or it can be the matter of a few lives or a generation or a set of an events that has meaning and so he's always playing with that idea of the patina of history even over a short period of time not a European city that has centuries after the riots the social makeup of marks neighborhood changed as african-americans moved elsewhere and were replaced by an influx of Hispanic immigrants the precarious lives of this fledgling community left traces on the walls and telegraph poles around inspiring a huge work with a loaded title plus Rosco's translates to the Flies which is a derogatory term for migrant day workers you know people who might be by the side of the road waiting to get into the back of a pickup truck in order to go to any number of jobs and be paid off the grid Latin American people had a very different relationship to public space so you started seeing people more selling on the streets food vendors so public space again start to change and that was really interesting to me too formerly the work is so astonishing because you have this kind of black field that's punctuated by these very vivid colors and personally and I'm from LA it always reminds me of what it's like that kind of that sense of excitement and kind of that's kind of sprawling beauty of landing at LAX at night so there's both this sense of it really looking like a place but also all of the ways that it evokes this whole other world I do have this idea of being a witness a little bit and wanting to have memory that people lived here for Mark what he makes in the studio is only part of being an artist he dedicates his time and resources into developing the arts and addressing social needs in his city ten years ago he set up a foundation called art and practice to give back to the community he grew up in Leimert Park what if little mark had walked in to a space in his neighborhood on his way to the store for his mother and he experienced contemporary ideas forget about the obstacle contemporary ideas it was a performance it was a sculpture that didn't look like anything that he'd ever seen the first time I went to art in practice it really felt like something new was happening in the art world a space where everyone was welcome where the very idea of contemporary art being for everybody was being played out giving people access to Contemporary Arts one thing but meeting people that their need their personal kind of emotional personal private need that has to do with something more urgent is kind of where art and practice sits at the crossroads of kind of access in need arts and practice provides support services to foster youth in South Los Angeles as well as putting on free museum quality art exhibitions for the local community to enjoy it is a epidemic a foster youth many young people hanging out in the in the park in front of the foundation nowhere to go timed out the foster care system just and I thought well that's what we should do we should work with social service provider that deals with foster youth issues what I find interesting is if you think about other models for this kind of community engagement in this country are these extraordinary african-american men I have to say Rick Lowe and Houston Theaster gates in Chicago who have used their success in the market to then give back to their own is really exemplary I see what it's doing I see the change that it's making and it's exciting [Music] the venice biennale is the biggest and the most prestigious events in the art world exhibitions installations and national pavilions spill out of palazzos squares and churches across the city black gay and liberal mark Bradford has been chosen to represent the USA being african-american there's oftentimes this idea that I'm supposed to represent and I've always pushed back against that I'm like I'm not represent a whole race of people that's ridiculous so for me how can I represent a whole country that's ridiculous but what I can do is I can make a body of work that has and holds the ideas that are particular to me more often than not the American artists who were chose to do the Venice Biennale are struck first by the American aesthetic this very symmetrical Jeffersonian architecture it feels like the White House the first time you visit it you're on the good behavior you walk around they say and this is where you're going to show and this is what and it feels like a UNESCO site and I thought Oh wouldn't it be interesting to kind of pollute it a little bit like the White House after the apocalypse he's called his exhibition tomorrow is another day bringing together sweeping canvases brooding sculptures and a film together they cast a critical eye over structures of class race and gender that underpin American society today so we entered through the side which is very important I never felt more walking through the front door whatever work I don't think that strong ideas ever go to the front door anyway the whole process was really bodily you come to spoiled foot this bulbous masse you see the ceiling that has collapsed and you really have to hug the edges of the room the center is not yours to be able to access people are always doing this passive looking it's always horizontal and they're just doing this with their head standing in the center and I thought I really want to play with the physicality of the person's body and so I created a space that feels tight and that you can't get into the center the center is not there there's no longer the center of the room I want to collapse and make a sculpture that infests the center really about innards and the next sculpture in the second room is really like vomiting uh-huh it's like vomiting up the innards looks like entrails it looks like guts I think he wants it to discomfort the emanates from the world today to breathe out of the pavilion I kind of wanted to make it feel like a ruin because whatever America will be moving forward it is not what it was so this idea of that whatever we were and that's going one of the things about my Bradford is that he can tear apart an entire constructive like freedom government history and he can do in a way that's still sensuous and beautiful the final words in marks exhibition isn't a painting but a film called Niagara that he made in 2005 it depicts his former neighbor Melvin walking away from the camera markers again chosen to put black identities centerstage striding confidently into the future to give Melvin that last word when this is your triumphant moment I think speaks again to that generosity that's always there in the work the vulnerability of that body the street is hot and so the the kind of heat waves come up and distort his body in various ways but I think to bring that which is an older work to bring that back at this moment was a way of speaking to a kind of vulnerability of a particular identity in this culture at this moment so it speaks to the long arc of American history and what it means to be an American and at the same time the unflinching in one's criticality that's about a hard one hope hard one and a little rough around the edges but still hopeful with his vulnerabilities and his strengths this is I just I hope I like the most in some way he's an artist that's eternally optimistic the thing about Marc's work is that it is opinionated but it's also never without hope I think that working at it of the surface is for me that sense that there's a you know that's all there is to do is keep working at it I need to make the world understand that this is what an artist looks like that we can be at the table alongside the politician the preacher all the other people that they allow at the table for some reason they don't think that we need to be at the table which I never understand when we lose our passport you make the space and I think that people who were not allowed or people who were uncomfortable taking up space with the main ones that should take up space I think that people who lived on the margins and people who don't feel like they should take up space in the main one should take up space Diego my right hand excuse me would you mind if history moved forward no force aggressive you sit you demand [Music] [Music] brilliant ideas powered by Hyundai Motor

Channel: Bloomberg Markets and Finance

Views: 124,968

Rating: 4.8961506 out of 5

Keywords: Bloomberg, Brilliant Ideas, Mark Bradford, Art, Los Angeles, Urban art, street art, Biennale

Id: I5mhdCvhDtQ

Length: 24min 15sec (1455 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 03 2018