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Lot Essay
Mark Bradford’s, Sea Monster is a monumental canvas that draws power from the artist’s ability to collect and construct vast abstractions from found materials. Working in Los Angeles, Bradford pays special attention to the urban space and the ways in which color, material, and subject exist in a constant state of flux. “I do not like conversations about Winsor & Newton and surface and transparency and luminosity and glazing”, Bradford admits. “No. I’m like: go find it. It has to exist somewhere out there; go find it. What painters fetishize—surface and translucence—I learned all about that through architecture and the sides of buildings. I understand transparency because of the erosion of paper” (M. Bradford, quoted in C. S. Eliel, “Dynamisms and Quiet Whispers: Conversations with Mark Bradford”, Mark Bradford, exh. cat. Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, 2010, p. 63). By imitating and evolving the entropic effects of weather and wear on paper and other materials in his compositions, Bradford bridges the divide between the city and his studio. Making reference to the absorptive qualities of Abstract Expressionist canvases, Bradford eschews the psychological tensions and individual angst in favor of an intensive visual treatise on the confluence of abstraction and the real world.
I do not like conversations about Winsor & Newton and surface and transparency and luminosity and glazing. No. I’m like: go find it. It has to exist somewhere out there; go find it. What painters fetishize – surface and translucence – I learned all about that through architecture and the sides of buildings. I understand transparency because of the erosion of paper.(M. Bradford, quoted in C. S. Eliel, “Dynamisms and Quiet Whispers: Conversations with Mark Bradford”, Mark Bradford, exh. cat. Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, 2010, p. 63).
A monumental canvas spanning twelve feet across, Sea Monster is filled with a rich array of different media typical of Bradford’s expansive oeuvre. Paper, paint, and cast-off material coalesce into a varied surface that the artist explores with a fiery intensity. Within an overwhelming sea of black marks and incisions, a luminous mass emerges like the titular creature from the ocean’s depths. Blue, green, and bits of yellow and red push through the black and gray layers to draw the eye inward, creating a visual anchor for the roiling abstraction. Bradford’s process is meticulous and time-consuming, a fact that is instantly noticeable when one gets up close to view the many layers that he has built up, painted, scratched, sanded, and then formed again. Referencing the musician Miles Davis as he describes his working methods, the artist explains, “When [Davis] does improvisational jazz, it is so structured around this history of what he knows. There is improvisation, but I know what I put under there. I keep exacting notes. Every time I put on a different piece of paper, I take a picture and it goes into my database. I know exactly what color I put on yesterday. So when I’m sanding, I know it’s a dark gray” (M. Bradford, quoted in G. Edgers, “Outside the Paint”, The Washington Post, Oct. 10, 2019). Though it may look like chance, this appearance only serves to emphasize Bradford’s prodigious talent for fully embracing abstraction on a grand scale. Studying the entirety of Sea Monster, it is easy to view large swatches of black or blue as discrete, flat areas. However, upon closer inspection, one is delighted to find an intensely worked surface that makes the artist’s process clear. Not only is the work varied in its color and texture, but also in its topography as base layers are brought to light through carving and others are obscured by new additions. In this heightened state of viewing, larger questions form about the layers of material, their previous use, and how they made their way into the artist’s hands.
Bradford’s practice can be viewed as anthropological and archaeological as he mines the world around him in order to better represent the social strata of his lived existence. However, far from being representational of specific moments or people, abstractions like Sea Monster allude to a variety of levels by exploring the artist’s practice and interaction with his media. “I may pull the raw material from a very specific place, culturally from a particular place, but then I abstract it. I’m only really interested in abstraction; but social abstraction, not just the 1950s abstraction. The painting practice will always be a painting practice but we’re living in a post-studio world, and this has to do with the relationship with things that are going on outside" (M. Bradford, in conversation with S. May, in Through Darkest America by Truck and Tank, exh. cat., London, White Cube, 2013-14, p. 83). Aware of the fact that artists no longer create within a bubble, Bradford is quick to highlight the confluence of artistic and daily experience. It is at this crossroads that his works lie and where he can create his most powerful statements.
Though he firmly roots himself within the trajectory of abstract painting, Bradford is quick to point out how his practice differs from those of painters that came before. In an effort to build upon this legacy and create something that speaks to a more diverse, expansive audience, the artist examines the way abstraction can be applied to social theories, and how an investigation of time and place can factor into a work that makes no direct reference to representational subjects. “As a twenty-first-century African American artist,” he notes, “when I look back at Abstract Expressionism, I get the politics, I get the problems, I get the theories, I can read [Still’s] manifestos, but I think there are other ways of looking through abstraction. To use the whole social fabric of our society as a point of departure for abstraction reanimates it, dusts it off. It becomes really interesting to me, and supercharged. I just find that chilling and amazing” (M. Bradford, “Clyfford Still’s Paintings”, in The Artist Project: What Artists See When They Look at Art, New York, 2017, p. 46). Not diverting completely from their methods, he nonetheless treats abstraction as an investigative mode rather than something purely expressive. What might seem to be a gestural stroke turns out to be a carefully excavated channel through built-up layers of color. Whereas his predecessors embraced chance, chaos, and the inimitable gesture, Bradford keeps detailed notes about each work as he adds and subtracts each component. In this way, he has evolved the abstract painting beyond its origin and charged it with an even deeper significance.
I do not like conversations about Winsor & Newton and surface and transparency and luminosity and glazing. No. I’m like: go find it. It has to exist somewhere out there; go find it. What painters fetishize – surface and translucence – I learned all about that through architecture and the sides of buildings. I understand transparency because of the erosion of paper.(M. Bradford, quoted in C. S. Eliel, “Dynamisms and Quiet Whispers: Conversations with Mark Bradford”, Mark Bradford, exh. cat. Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, 2010, p. 63).
A monumental canvas spanning twelve feet across, Sea Monster is filled with a rich array of different media typical of Bradford’s expansive oeuvre. Paper, paint, and cast-off material coalesce into a varied surface that the artist explores with a fiery intensity. Within an overwhelming sea of black marks and incisions, a luminous mass emerges like the titular creature from the ocean’s depths. Blue, green, and bits of yellow and red push through the black and gray layers to draw the eye inward, creating a visual anchor for the roiling abstraction. Bradford’s process is meticulous and time-consuming, a fact that is instantly noticeable when one gets up close to view the many layers that he has built up, painted, scratched, sanded, and then formed again. Referencing the musician Miles Davis as he describes his working methods, the artist explains, “When [Davis] does improvisational jazz, it is so structured around this history of what he knows. There is improvisation, but I know what I put under there. I keep exacting notes. Every time I put on a different piece of paper, I take a picture and it goes into my database. I know exactly what color I put on yesterday. So when I’m sanding, I know it’s a dark gray” (M. Bradford, quoted in G. Edgers, “Outside the Paint”, The Washington Post, Oct. 10, 2019). Though it may look like chance, this appearance only serves to emphasize Bradford’s prodigious talent for fully embracing abstraction on a grand scale. Studying the entirety of Sea Monster, it is easy to view large swatches of black or blue as discrete, flat areas. However, upon closer inspection, one is delighted to find an intensely worked surface that makes the artist’s process clear. Not only is the work varied in its color and texture, but also in its topography as base layers are brought to light through carving and others are obscured by new additions. In this heightened state of viewing, larger questions form about the layers of material, their previous use, and how they made their way into the artist’s hands.
Bradford’s practice can be viewed as anthropological and archaeological as he mines the world around him in order to better represent the social strata of his lived existence. However, far from being representational of specific moments or people, abstractions like Sea Monster allude to a variety of levels by exploring the artist’s practice and interaction with his media. “I may pull the raw material from a very specific place, culturally from a particular place, but then I abstract it. I’m only really interested in abstraction; but social abstraction, not just the 1950s abstraction. The painting practice will always be a painting practice but we’re living in a post-studio world, and this has to do with the relationship with things that are going on outside" (M. Bradford, in conversation with S. May, in Through Darkest America by Truck and Tank, exh. cat., London, White Cube, 2013-14, p. 83). Aware of the fact that artists no longer create within a bubble, Bradford is quick to highlight the confluence of artistic and daily experience. It is at this crossroads that his works lie and where he can create his most powerful statements.
Though he firmly roots himself within the trajectory of abstract painting, Bradford is quick to point out how his practice differs from those of painters that came before. In an effort to build upon this legacy and create something that speaks to a more diverse, expansive audience, the artist examines the way abstraction can be applied to social theories, and how an investigation of time and place can factor into a work that makes no direct reference to representational subjects. “As a twenty-first-century African American artist,” he notes, “when I look back at Abstract Expressionism, I get the politics, I get the problems, I get the theories, I can read [Still’s] manifestos, but I think there are other ways of looking through abstraction. To use the whole social fabric of our society as a point of departure for abstraction reanimates it, dusts it off. It becomes really interesting to me, and supercharged. I just find that chilling and amazing” (M. Bradford, “Clyfford Still’s Paintings”, in The Artist Project: What Artists See When They Look at Art, New York, 2017, p. 46). Not diverting completely from their methods, he nonetheless treats abstraction as an investigative mode rather than something purely expressive. What might seem to be a gestural stroke turns out to be a carefully excavated channel through built-up layers of color. Whereas his predecessors embraced chance, chaos, and the inimitable gesture, Bradford keeps detailed notes about each work as he adds and subtracts each component. In this way, he has evolved the abstract painting beyond its origin and charged it with an even deeper significance.