Mark Bradford on Making Art in Post-Shock Phase of the Trump Era and How Comics Channel This Moment
Mark Bradford folded his lanky frame into a Modernist chair in the mezzanine space at the downtown Los Angeles outpost of the global mega gallery Hauser & Wirth. After more than a year of globetrotting, he’s come home.
Last May, Bradford represented the United States at the 2017 Venice Biennale, where he transformed the neoclassical U.S. pavilion into a site of menace and decay — a mordant reflection on the violent legacies of U.S. history and the state of American democracy under the nascent Trump administration.
In November, he debuted an eight-painting work spanning nearly 400 linear feet in the circular galleries of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., reflecting on a decisive battle in the U.S. Civil War: Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg in 1863.
And earlier this month, he was in London, installing a 32-panel painting in the new U.S. embassy there. For those pieces, Bradford immersed himself in the U.S. Constitution — incorporating the entire text into the work.
“It’s definitely been stadium tours,” Bradford said of his very busy year. “Now, I want to play small clubs.”
Though how small, given Bradford’s stature, is anybody’s guess. Bradford was about to open an exhibition of new paintings at Hauser & Wirth — his first solo commercial gallery show in L.A. since a 2002 exhibition at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects — and already major collectors were taking an interest. During our interview, Interscope Records co-founder Jimmy Iovine and Guess co-founder Maurice Marciano, of the Marciano Art Foundation museum and board co-chair at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, were cruising through the galleries for a VIP preview of Bradford’s latest work.
“Love it, love it, love it,” said Marciano, nodding at Bradford as he passed by.
The new paintings still employ Bradford’s familiar technique of painting, collaging, scraping and cutting — for abstracted canvases that are worn rather than painted into existence. But the new series feels more explosively visceral, with a more lurid color palette. Some of that is the result of using pages from hundreds of old comic books in the layering process.