Mark Bradford

Scorched Earth, 2006, The Broad

Mark Bradford has made abstraction, that most abstruse of styles, postmodern, through his “social abstractions” that bring the real world of South Central Los Angeles into his paintings not by illustration or narration, but by making humble non-art detritus the very material of his work. Bradford’s medium is paper. He collects fragments of his urban environment—billboards, magazines, merchant posters advertising everything from foreclosure prevention to debt relief, wigs, jobs, paternity testing, gun shows and quick cash—and collages 10-15 layers of them on canvas. Using a sander, he roughs up the surface to reveal layers beneath. In a process he calls “collage and décollage,” the patterns of race, class, gender that structure American life come to the surface as faces, words, surprising juxtapositions pop out. He adds extra texture through string, caulking or mis-mixed house paint; as he says, “If Home Depot doesn’t have it, Mark Bradford doesn’t need it.”

At 6’7”, a Black man who found basketball too aggressive, Bradford was always an anomaly, a man anchored in two worlds. He worked as a hairdresser while attending the theory-heavy art program at Cal Arts, which he started at 30. Bradford crafted his earliest works from permanent-wave end papers, which dance in a glistening, translucent, pastel grid across the canvas. In 2001, two of those works were exhibited in Freestyle, a group exhibition of “post-black art” at the Studio Museum of Harlem. Since then, his star has never stopped rising. He received a MacArthur Genius Award in 2009.

One of his most powerful works is Scorched Earth, from 2006, a huge, roiling mass of red and black that resembles an aerial map of a burned-out city. It was inspired by the Tulsa riots of 1921, when white mobs burned down one of the wealthiest black communities in the country. It could just as easily call to mind riots in other cities, perhaps Los Angeles? 

Bradford’s art supports social activism. In 2008, he in New Orleans’ devastated Ninth Ward to build a giant “ark” out of shipping containers like those that broke loose and did so much damage during Hurricane Katrina. In 2014, he did a series on the Bill of Rights—the most precious paper that we Americans have. Bradford helped establish Art + Practice to provide art opportunities and free programming for youth in his hometown, especially those transitioning out of foster care. Artist Paul Chan sees Bradford “trying to situate his life as an artist in other ways besides simply being an artist”--always asking what more art can do.