Mark Bradford: The Other Side of Perfect

Interview with Mark Bradford

TG: So Mark, I was looking forward today to talking to you about these four works that you are going to show at World Class Boxing this winter, because I think this will be a great opportunity to speak about this new body of work, as well as what you have been thinking about after the past twelve very busy months. My immediate impression when I saw these works was that they represented a bold move forward in your practice. I want to talk specifically about the two paintings, Scorched Earth (2006) and Black Wall Street (2006), and the two untitled works on paper (2006) that will be included in the exhibition. Tell me about how these two new paintings came to be. I am also very interested in what you were looking at and thinking about when you made this body of work.

MB: Well, Scorched Earth and Black Wall Street refer to a real moment in American history. In 1948 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, there was a race riot. They used to call Tulsa "Black Wall Street," because there were so many black professional businesses that were doing really well there. So there was a race riot, and some people believed that it was instigated by the Ku Klux Klan. And what happened was that this was the first time in American history [aside from the Civil War] that the American military actually dropped bombs on American citizens. And it just basically decimated Black Wall Street in Tulsa. Three or four thousand people were killed, and the event is still very undocumented. So I took that moment in history because we're talking so much about war now, but it's always about war over there. 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. Not only a kind of cognitive map, but in that I wanted to take an actual moment in history and then abstract it and pull it apart and then put it back together again. The painting is like a puzzle. I break it apart and then put it back together again.

TG: That fracturing and reassembling are evident. That seems to be one of the ways these paintings indicate a movement forward. Up to this point, it seems as if your paintings have been made through an additive process. You start with the blank canvas and then you add to it. What I saw in these paintings was a way in which you were adding and subtracting at the very same time.

MB: At a point I realized that just to add them, it was, I think, historically very much about collage. And so I wanted to almost find fissures, and the only way that I could do that was to take away. And then the tension between adding and subtracting started to create a dynamic that I really hadn't seen before.

TG: I looked at the painting Scorched Earth as being topographical, like an aerial view of the city with the middle area — its heart — completely scorched, burned, erased. MB: Absolutely, I wanted there to be two points to the painting. A topographical point, as it always seems that my work appears to be about the relationship to the body and space. And so I wanted the space to be from your body looking at it from above, but at the same time, your body is also inside the painting, which creates an experience of immediacy to the physical space inside. I am interested in the experience of the above and the within, and I think it's that same dynamic. These two points of view and these two ways of working continually overlapping each other are what I work toward in each painting.

TG: There is a lot of tension in these pictures. Both pictures, in different ways, have an incredible amount of tension, and I think that comes from their scale. I'd like you to talk about scale — this large scale, and the way in which you've always approached scale in your work. But also, it seems the tension is created by the color. And I really want you to talk about sort of the formal approach to color in these two works.

MB: Actually, I was really uncomfortable about using so much color. Usually the color that I use comes from the paper that I find. But actually this is the first time I added color. I specifically added red. Red is such a loaded color, and I really didn't think that I was going to be able to use it. I really, really grappled with it, and I was really, really uncomfortable with using the color red because historically it has so many cultural and artistic associations. I was really uncomfortable with it, but the more I worked with it, the more it just started to make sense. It is actually the first painting where I have ever added color with paint — actually, traditional art paint. I usually don't work with art paint. I think it has baggage that I can't seem to get around sometimes.

TG: Which is what?

MB: The baggage of art history. The language of art history and art materials; they go so well together that I find it kind of difficult to dislodge them.

TG: You don't want to own or claim the language of art history and art materials to your own use?

MB: Well, that's what I was trying to do, and I think that's what I was working out. I was saying, "Well, why not own it? Why not delve into that?" I think my hesitancy was that I wasn't going to be able to own it, that it was going to eclipse me. I could control the materials, but approaching this material that is so heavily loaded, I wasn't sure that I could own it. But I think that I actually struggled with that through this painting, and I was able to make this material my own.

TG: It's interesting to consider these two paintings together, as they will be shown together. I know you don't intend them as a diptych or a pair, but they respond to each other. Scorched Earth seems to be like an explosion, and Black Wall Street seems to be an implosion. And it almost seems as if there's a way in which they mirror each other. Can you talk about the moment that these two paintings came out of, and the other paintings you were making at the same time?

MB: I was working on Ridin' Dirty (2006) for the São Paulo Bienal, which was sort of taking merchant posters and making these huge sprawling grids. The urban grid and art historical grid were things that I was really becoming interested in, and how I could weave them or collapse them together. You can automatically kind of see this sort of urban grid, but then the art historical grid kind of holds it together — the abstraction. It holds it together; that history is there; you can't erase it. Organizing the paintings in a geometric way has always been such a part of the work, but then I became interested in ways that I could collapse the rigid geometry. And I could, actually, because I felt like the body existed in the urban grid, and I felt like the art historical grid was more sort of a way of working but not being.

TG: And you think there is no body in the art historical grid?

MB: I almost feel like it's an empty vessel. I really do.

TG: And is some of your project about endowing that empty vessel with the body? A body?

MB: Absolutely!

TG: Your body?

MB: I think in some ways it has to be my body. I look at my work, and it has always been about a body and space. And I think in some ways it has to be my body, or an abstracted version of a body — a floating body. Yeah, I definitely think in some ways it is me dealing with my body, but not the actual body. It's wanting to infuse it with my body, but not wanting to pictorially show the body.

TG: So it's actually metaphorical, as opposed to autobiographical?

MB: Yes.

TG: Visual, as opposed to narrative?

MB: Yes.

TG: Let's talk about the process of these paintings. How do you actually make them? You start with unstretched canvas?

MB: Yes.

TG: And then you start by beginning to map out what you imagine is going to happen on the canvas.

MB: I do, actually. I make this map from my imagination that is based on real maps. I find one thing interesting about maps: they exist within the memory as real things. Everyone knows what a map looks like, and they're always trying to find their body on the map; they're always trying to place themselves where they are. And maps are great things, because we study them to find where we're going — GPS units, everything's about a map — but it's interesting because maps to me are such fragile systems, because at the moment of a war, at the moment of gentrification, they change. So they're the most inflexible, flexible thing I can think of. They imbue you with this security, and at the same time they're deeply, deeply flawed. They document the history of power; they document the history of wars. Maps documents lots of lies. I mean, you can see the mapping of continents. Maps to me are tricky and insidious, and they've always fascinated me.

TG: And so that's why in many ways you remake them.

MB: I remake them, and I re-map. And you know it's sort of like me taking and moving around this history that's so flawed. I'll make these maps from my imagination, and viewers see countries, they always see cities, and then they begin to find themselves.

TG: That is one way the experience of abstraction is understood generally.

MB: Absolutely.

TG: Some see what they want or they need or they desire to see. Right?

MB: And that's true. That's true, and I like that. I absolutely like that. And once I've sort of mapped out a map, then I become like a city planner to complete the structure and surface of the painting. I start to make neighborhoods, and I start to make the center of the city. Working on the painting is almost like child's play. I begin to make a narrative. It's personal, and it's based on my imagination.

TG: When thinking about your body in space, I also always think about your body in the urban grid: quite literally, the way in which you exist as a person and an artist in the city, your city. I think about the way, when we have walked through your neighborhood, that you move around on the street. I'd love for you to talk about the works on paper and the way in which those works are a real evidence of your relationship to the urban space.

MB: Well, in making these I knew that I wanted to do another group of works that had the same information, but I wanted to articulate it in a different way. I move through the city in kind of a hypervisible and invisible way at the same time. And one thing is interesting to me about public space, which is the way it can be transformed. There are two moments that have influenced me in my thinking about the city. Historically, I am interested in Europe in the postwar moment, and I am particularly interested in Los Angeles in this moment after the 1992 riots. I always say that there are two things that influence me, it's postriot and post-war. I am very much influenced by Villeglé and the way that he would take the cinema posters that papered Paris after the war, and how that sort of imagery became so much a part of his work, but I believe that the exact same thing happened in Los Angeles post-riot. There were so many barricaded, burnt-out buildings that these perimeters came up all around the city, and they became papered. They weren't papered with Hollywood cinema ads but, instead, ads for urban and hip-hop music. So for the first time really in sort of South Central, you saw tons and tons of these rectangles just covering that saturation, that density, that I don't think we ever had before. And so I think that that really changed the aesthetic view of the city. You could not get around the fact that you saw miles and miles and miles of these sorts of informal advertising areas that had never been there before. Now, the ads are not just for music but for everything. The ads I have used for these works on paper were found on the street. And what fascinated me about these ads is that it was so aggressive. It was basically advertising a gun show. And I just thought: that was really in your face; that just gets right to the hint of the constant presence of violence that I am always talking about.

TG: This was an actual gun show? This is what was being advertised on the posters?

MB: Oh yeah!

TG: And it was in South Central, Los Angeles?

MB: Sure, sure, sure.

TG: And is this common in South Central?

MB: No.

TG: This direct advertising of a gun show in the middle of the neighborhood, distressed by gun violence, was something new that you had never seen?

MB: Yes, which fascinated me. I am always interested in what's new. It's always interesting, because I always know that it is about someone trying to make money. They recognize the need. Or the desire. Without a sense of responsibility. So I really felt that it was interesting that there was going to be a gun show. I was drawn to the content, but the poster itself was also interesting aesthetically. I liked the fact that it was printed on both sides and that if I flipped it around, it would mirror itself in a way.

TG: Tell me exactly how you make these works? What is the support? Do you collage the found sign on paper?

MB: The support, actually, is always the found billboard itself.

TG: And is your choice of which billboards to use based on the visual or the verbal meaning?

MB: It's always language. It is always very specifically language, and it's specifically to do with a body of ideas that are existing in that community so that it points very specifically to cultural, social, and economic flow.

TG: You rip or cut the posters off the walls, bring them into your studio, and then what do you do to them?

MB: Then I trace with strings, almost like in kindergarten; I trace with string all the letters, using my hand. Using my hand creates an imperfection that's going to happen. It begins to stop becoming this mass-produced advertising poster, and my hand starts to show more. Once I've traced the textual information with my hand, then I cover it with billboard paper that I've picked out from the streets. But I don't cover it with information out; I cover with information in, so actually it's the back of the billboard. And the reason why the back of it is blue is because they print on blue paper so that when they lay it on top of the next ad, it doesn't bleed through. So I love the fact that this color comes from the fact that they're trying to keep it from bleeding through. And I love information that bleeds through, so I use the back, and especially because it's blue, and then if information bleeds through, then that's what happens.

TG: And the size is really determined by the size of the original?

MB: Absolutely. A lot of the final result of these works is determined by what I find.

TG: So your intervention is really determined by the circumstance that you find?

MB: Absolutely. And then it really becomes a work that is not just found, but from this sort of place of imagination. I start with what I find, then add and alter and I start to build from that. And then I start to strip away and add and to pull back. The process becomes like an archeological dig.

TG: Um-hmm.

MB: Really like an archaeological dig. I wanted to be an archaeologist, actually.

TG: Well, in some ways, by the way you have chosen to make your work, you are.

MB: That's true.

TG: You are looking for things, looking for clues; you look for the evidence of what those clues mean about a particular place or time or the people in that place. Is there a sitespecific aspect to this project?

MB: Yes, I went to Miami and saw the space. I actually made the works thinking about the space and thinking about Miami.

TG: In what way?

MB: Because I felt Miami's a really interesting place racially and economically, and there are so many layers to Miami and so much unrest and a lot of gentrification going on. I was thinking about a lot of these issues and ideas when I was making the work.

TG: The space itself as well as the city?

MB: Sure, definitely. And specifically the area in which World Class Boxing is situated. The neighborhood, the street life — it all kind of influenced me. The hand-painted signs on the buildings, because they seem to have a really strong tradition, because where World Class Boxing is, it seems like there were a lot of small factories and manufacturers. Many of these buildings have signage like the signage that you find a lot in Africa and the Caribbean. And so my eye was drawn to these signs, and it all kind of lodged in my memory.

TG: So you took that in a way, sort of a snapshot of the area also was what you were thinking about as another topography to imprint on the work.

MB: Yeah.

TG: And is this kind of site specificity inspiring to you? Does it always have a reference that is real and imagined that you bring into the work?

MB: I wonder. I think it must be, because I can't remember ever making abstract work with just paint; it was always some material that I found or something that triggered my imagination and my memory. Absolutely. Something to work against. I always like to work against the material or something found that I have to grapple with, and something that's not determined by my hand. I'm always interested in things that exist outside of my hand.

TG: It seems that your work is so tied to your vision and the way you see the world. What do you want the viewer of your work to experience, to feel, to see? Do you want to determine that? Do you have any idea about what you hope that experience might be?

MB: Well, I think you touched on it a little bit earlier when you said that people bring themselves and their ideas to their own understanding of abstraction. I think I want my work to lodge in memory, and it can be personal, it doesn't have to be something that I think I am imbued enough with — a certain materiality, and that has a lot of memory in it — and sort of with the mapping that I hope it triggers some memories, maybe of a place, whether that's real or imagined, but I think a place. Memories of relationships, fragility. Possibility. Yeah — possibility.

TG: What are you thinking about for your next steps?

MB: I just think I'll probably just keep falling through the looking glass. Really, I think that they'll just become more — I want to just go deeper, finding the details that really spark my imagination. I think that's probably the next: more of this. Just more because I feel there is more to explore. These works are very intense in a way that I find uncomfortable.

TG: For you, or for your viewer?

MB: For me. Because these works are revealing more than I ever have in the past. I usually like to kind of keep things kind of bottled up, controlled, and I look at those works and I was really uncomfortable, especially Black Wall Street, but it felt right — but it felt much more revealing than I had allowed works to be in the past. So this intensity, it's a good thing.

TG: No, it's a great thing.

MB: But it's uncomfortable.

TG: Sometimes discomfort is probably a good thing for you and the work. Maybe this discomfort is an artistic growing pain. You are growing, Mark, that's what it is.

MB: I'm already six-foot-eight.

TG: (laughing)

October 23, 2006, New York City

MARK BRADFORD was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1961 and lives and works in Los Angeles. He has shown in group and solo exhibitions including Freestyle, curated by Thelma Golden and Christine Kim, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, USA; traveled to Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA, USA (2001), Very Powerful Lords, Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York, NY, USA (2003), Bounce: Mark Bradford and Glenn Kaino, REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA USA (2004), inSite: Art Practices in the Public Domain, San Diego, CA, USA and Tijuana, Mexico (2005), Grace and Measure, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY, USA (2005), Whitney Biennial: Day for Night, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, USA (2006). Most recently Bradford represented the US at the 2006 São Paulo Bienal: How to Live Together.

THELMA GOLDEN is Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, an international nexus for Black artists. Ms. Golden began her career as a curator at the Studio Museum in 1987, before joining the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1988. During the next ten years she organized many notable exhibitions, including the watershed 1993 Biennial, directed by Elizabeth Sussman; Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Art; Bob Thompson: A Retrospective; Heart, Mind, Body, Soul: New Work from the Collection; and Hindsight: Recent Work from the Permanent Collection. At the Studio Museum, Ms. Golden has been chief curator since 2000, and director since 2005. She has organized a number of groundbreaking exhibitions, including Chris Ofili: Afro Muses 1995-2005; harlemworld: Metropolis as Metaphor; Black Romantic; Freestyle; Material and Matter; Glenn Ligon: Stranger; Martin Puryear: The Cane Project; and Isaac Julien: Vagabondia.