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Lot Essay
Reading the charge of a new generation of innovative American abstractionists, Mark Bradford’s culturally informed practice harnesses the complexities of urban life to create energetic compositions that deal with issues of materiality and history in equal measure. Window Shopper is an important early work that Bradford completed as he was gaining international acclaim. Created just four years after his inclusion in Thelma Golden’s pivotal Freestyle exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem, this dynamic construction sees the artist working to parse multiple layers into a rich amalgam of visual information. Speaking to his place within the legacy of abstract painting, Bradford notes, “As a twenty-first-century African American artist, when I look back at Abstract Expressionism, I get the politics, I get the problems, I get the theories, I can read [Clyfford 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). By diverting from the Modernist ideal of creating self-sustaining abstractions, Bradford is able to speak to something more universal while remaining entrenched within a specific cultural landscape.
Rendered on an off-white ground, Window Shopper is a premier example of Bradford’s innovative process. Building up layers of blue, red, yellow, and other colors upon the work’s surface, he inundates the eyes with visual information. The central section of this work is more colorful, it displays horizontal stripes of shocking blue and red interspersed with rectilinear forms of safety orange. Upon closer inspection, it’s obvious that there is an immense depth of material within the piece, but the nature of paper and its near two-dimensionality builds up visual information while remaining relatively flat. "I understand transparency because of the erosion of paper. What fascinates me about surface is the way in which paper creates depth, but at the same time it still has its singular form [...]" (M. Bradford, quoted in C. Eliel, Mark Bradford, exh. cat., The Ohio State University, Wexner Center for the Arts and travelling, 2010-12, p. 63). Working with the idea of the palimpsest, the act of reading one text through another, we see multiple layers at once and are informed by these visual juxtapositions the longer we stay with his work.
Bradford’s process is distinct in its use of cast-off materials as well as its indebtedness to the décollage techniques of Jacques Villeglé and Raymond Hains in the 1950s. Sourcing materials from around his studio, in the streets, and from his mother’s hair salon where he was once employed, the layers of works like Window Shopper are site-specific to those areas, neighborhoods, and cultural enclaves where he lives and works. The myriad posters wheat-pasted in ever-growing strata to walls and utility poles around these places show the passage of time and society’s evolution as it marches forward. “As the California sunshine beats down on the cheap color paper, I watch it go from bright fluorescent to faded and burned surfaces which begin to peel and look less and less to the passerby like advertisements and more and more like the remnants of a decaying city. What is most vivid to me as the paper begins to pile up in my studio, ready to become something else, is that I have forgotten and remembered it a thousand times” (M. Bradford, quoted in C. Foster, Neither New nor Correct: New Work by Mark Bradford, exh. cat, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2007, p. 23). Each layer present within works like Window Shopper point toward a specific time and place. They call out to their origins amidst the cacophony as Bradford scrapes, sands, and carves through each tier of memory.
In Window Shopper, what initially look like chance marks strewn across the surface are revealed as scraps and segments of existing materials under closer scrutiny. Acting as a modern-day cultural archaeologist, Bradford looks for new meaning in cast-off objects and urban detritus. By pairing, pasting, excavating, and painting with these bits of paper, tape, and other components, he is able to construct a hybrid object that glows with an internal sense of place. "I want my materials to actually have the memories – the cultural, personal memories that are lodged in the object. You can’t erase history, no matter what you do. It bleeds through." (M. Bradford, quoted in Mark Bradford: Merchant Posters, exh. cat., Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, 2010, p. 10). Speaking to the history of marginalized populations, Bradford reinvigorates the discourse around these cultures which is frequently lost to time. By doing so, he holds art history and the tradition of painting up to a new light and reveals past discrepancies.
Rendered on an off-white ground, Window Shopper is a premier example of Bradford’s innovative process. Building up layers of blue, red, yellow, and other colors upon the work’s surface, he inundates the eyes with visual information. The central section of this work is more colorful, it displays horizontal stripes of shocking blue and red interspersed with rectilinear forms of safety orange. Upon closer inspection, it’s obvious that there is an immense depth of material within the piece, but the nature of paper and its near two-dimensionality builds up visual information while remaining relatively flat. "I understand transparency because of the erosion of paper. What fascinates me about surface is the way in which paper creates depth, but at the same time it still has its singular form [...]" (M. Bradford, quoted in C. Eliel, Mark Bradford, exh. cat., The Ohio State University, Wexner Center for the Arts and travelling, 2010-12, p. 63). Working with the idea of the palimpsest, the act of reading one text through another, we see multiple layers at once and are informed by these visual juxtapositions the longer we stay with his work.
Bradford’s process is distinct in its use of cast-off materials as well as its indebtedness to the décollage techniques of Jacques Villeglé and Raymond Hains in the 1950s. Sourcing materials from around his studio, in the streets, and from his mother’s hair salon where he was once employed, the layers of works like Window Shopper are site-specific to those areas, neighborhoods, and cultural enclaves where he lives and works. The myriad posters wheat-pasted in ever-growing strata to walls and utility poles around these places show the passage of time and society’s evolution as it marches forward. “As the California sunshine beats down on the cheap color paper, I watch it go from bright fluorescent to faded and burned surfaces which begin to peel and look less and less to the passerby like advertisements and more and more like the remnants of a decaying city. What is most vivid to me as the paper begins to pile up in my studio, ready to become something else, is that I have forgotten and remembered it a thousand times” (M. Bradford, quoted in C. Foster, Neither New nor Correct: New Work by Mark Bradford, exh. cat, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2007, p. 23). Each layer present within works like Window Shopper point toward a specific time and place. They call out to their origins amidst the cacophony as Bradford scrapes, sands, and carves through each tier of memory.
In Window Shopper, what initially look like chance marks strewn across the surface are revealed as scraps and segments of existing materials under closer scrutiny. Acting as a modern-day cultural archaeologist, Bradford looks for new meaning in cast-off objects and urban detritus. By pairing, pasting, excavating, and painting with these bits of paper, tape, and other components, he is able to construct a hybrid object that glows with an internal sense of place. "I want my materials to actually have the memories – the cultural, personal memories that are lodged in the object. You can’t erase history, no matter what you do. It bleeds through." (M. Bradford, quoted in Mark Bradford: Merchant Posters, exh. cat., Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, 2010, p. 10). Speaking to the history of marginalized populations, Bradford reinvigorates the discourse around these cultures which is frequently lost to time. By doing so, he holds art history and the tradition of painting up to a new light and reveals past discrepancies.