An Artist’s Mythic Rebellion for the Venice Biennale. Mark Bradford’s concern: How can he represent the United States when he no longer feels represented by his government? -- THE NEW YORK TIMES
ABOUT THE ARTIST: Mark Bradford (American, b. 1961) is African American, Los Angeles based abstract painter. He graduated from Cal Arts He transforms materials scavenged from the street into wall-size collages and installations. He also maintains a social practice, anchored by his Los Angeles-based nonprofit, Art + Practice, which promotes education and culture by providing life skills training and arts education for foster youth in the community of Leimert Park, Los Angeles.
ABOUT THE BOOK : A non traditional catalog for Mark Bradford’s
2017 Venice Biennale installation in US Pavilion; in addition to his art includes a chorus of compelling voices: Peter James Hudson, Anita Hill, Sarah Lewis, and Zadie Smith; and excerpts from two historical texts: W.E.B. Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction in America and James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain.
PROMO:There has been MAJOR review coverage of Bradford's installation at Venice Biennale. New commissions include a lobby Wall Painting Hammer Museum LA; Hirshhorn Museum has commissioned Mark Bradford to do a site-specific painting that will occupy the entire circumference of the building's second-floor inner galleries to open Fall 2017.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
CHRISTOPHER BEDFORD is Director Baltimore Museum of ArtKATY SIEGEL is the Rose Art Museum's curator at large and Chair in Modern American Art, Stony Brook University .
ANITA F. HILL Professor of Social Policy, Law,Brandeis UniversityPETER JAMES HUDSON Professor of History UCLA. He is the author of Banking on Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017).
SARAH LEWIS Professor of History of Art Harvard University ,She is author of the bestseller The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for MasteryZADIE SMITH is the author of White Teeth Swing Time. She is a Professor at New York University
Edited with text by Christopher Bedford, Katy Siegel. Text by Peter James Hudson, Anita Hill, Sarah Lewis, Katy Siegel, Zadie Smith, James Baldwin, W.E.B. DuBois. Interview by Christopher Bedford.
America’s representative at the 2017 Venice Biennale, Bradford has radically renewed abstract art
Mark Bradford’s exhibition for the US Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, titled Tomorrow Is Another Day, is born out of the artist’s longtime commitment to the inherently social nature of the material world. For Bradford, abstraction is not opposed to content; it embodies it. Finding materials for his paintings in the hair salon, Home Depot and the streets of Los Angeles, Bradford renews the traditions of abstract painting, demonstrating that freedom from socially prescribed representation is profoundly meaningful in the hands of a black artist.
Mark Bradford: Tomorrow Is Another Day is not only a catalog for Bradford’s pavilion project; it is a different kind of book, a substantial publication that blends the biographical with the historical and political. Essays from outside the art world—by Anita Hill, Peter James Hudson, W.E.B. Du Bois and Zadie Smith—narrate a series of interwoven stories about Reconstruction, civil rights and the vulnerable body in urban space, fleshed out with vivid archival photographs and documents. The book also includes significant new texts from curator Katy Siegel and art historian Sarah Lewis, as well as a revealing interview with Bradford, offering a new understanding of the work of one of today’s most influential contemporary artists.
Mark Bradford was born in 1961 in Los Angeles, where he lives and works. Best known for his large-scale abstract paintings that examine the class-, race- and gender-based economies that structure urban society in the United States, Bradford’s richly layered and collaged canvases represent a connection to the social world through materials. Bradford uses fragments of found posters, billboards, newsprint and custom-printed paper to simultaneously engage with and advance the formal traditions of abstract painting.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Mark Bradford: Tomorrow Is Another Day.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The New York Times
Jori Finkel
one of America’s most acclaimed painters
Frieze
Mike Fox
Bradford’s work embodies a generosity of spirit that, for all the cruelty of White House politicians, can never be occluded within the US landscape.
Artnet News
Andrew Goldstein
Mark Bradford is our Jackson Pollock.... Bradford's project sets out a powerful vision of the artist's role in society.
Hyperallergic
Cara Ober
True to the title of his exhibition, Bradford has led us through the dark handicaps, painful questions, and seething affliction that beset America, sending us off with a final vision of a defiant walk into the future.
Huffington Post
Natalie Hegert
His work, while full of uncompromising beauty and awe-inspiring technical prowess, confronts us with issues of race and queerness. At a time of political strife and regressive policies, Mark Bradford is just the artist we need right now.
The Art Newspaper
Thelma Golden
a complex dialogue about America, painting, aesthetics, identity and history, as it pushes the boundaries of abstraction. The works make the urgency and immediacy of this moment physically palpable. I have long admired Mark’s prophetic artistic voice, and with this presentation I truly experienced the unique alchemy of his vision.
Interview
Mark Bradford is managing to produce stunning, kinetic abstract paintings—a genre that traditionally refutes political expression—while also investing every project with meaningful efforts for social change.
Culture Type
Victoria L. Valentine
It’s a panoramic offering that brings together the wise, ever-relevant words of James Baldwin and W.E.B. Du Bois, with the highly readable contributions of Anita F. Hill on the intersection of law, policy, art and injustice; Sarah Lewis on the art of productive dissent; and Zadie Smith on Bradford’s video “Niagara” and the larger meaning of one’s strut, swagger and sway.
Mark Bradford (2017 U.S. representative at the Venice Biennale) in the produce garden of the Venice women’s prison in 2016, alongside two members of the Rio Tera dei Pensieri social cooperative, which Bradford included in his monumental project. “At Rio Tera I gave a slide presentation: I showed me working in the hair salon, I showed slides of my friends, I showed me and my mom on a ladder painting the walls of a $200 place that we’d rented. I made sure they understood that I did not graduate from high school, that I did not do the things that would prepare me to be anything other than marginalized.… Maybe that’s why I treat people as family because I understand anybody who’s trying to make their way from the margin to closer to the center of power. Whether it’s personal power, economic power, or educational power, you feel like a refugee. You are alone. It ain’t your family going to help you—honey, you’re on your own. You’re standing at the bus stop and you hop on a bus. The only thing that you’ve got is people along the way who are going to help you, that’s it." continue to blog
Today, Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles opens Mark Bradford: New Works, and we celebrate both the show and Black History Month with this image from Tomorrow Is Another Day, published by Gregory R. Miller & Co. on the occasion of the 2017 Venice Biennale, where Bradford represented the United States. “There is walking and then there is dancing,” Zadie Smith writes in her catalog essay comparing the protagonist of Bradford’s 2005 video Niagara to Marilyn Monroe in the 1953 film of the same name. “And now I watch Mark Bradford’s neighbor walking away from me just as Marilyn did, albeit in a baggy pair of yellow shorts, battered boots, a half-ruined vest, and pristine white socks. Here is sex appeal and swagger and a fierce aesthetic, all managed on the tiniest of budgets. An outdoor public performance for whoever happens to be watching. All eyes on me. What does the unseen passerby make of him? We can’t know, but we certainly understand that not all such walks are received equally.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 11.75 in. / 230 pgs / 151 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $60.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $79 ISBN: 9781941366141 PUBLISHER: Gregory R. Miller & Co. AVAILABLE: 6/27/2017 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co.. Edited with text by Christopher Bedford, Katy Siegel. Text by Peter James Hudson, Anita Hill, Sarah Lewis, Katy Siegel, Zadie Smith, James Baldwin, W.E.B. DuBois. Interview by Christopher Bedford.
America’s representative at the 2017 Venice Biennale, Bradford has radically renewed abstract art
Mark Bradford’s exhibition for the US Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, titled Tomorrow Is Another Day, is born out of the artist’s longtime commitment to the inherently social nature of the material world. For Bradford, abstraction is not opposed to content; it embodies it. Finding materials for his paintings in the hair salon, Home Depot and the streets of Los Angeles, Bradford renews the traditions of abstract painting, demonstrating that freedom from socially prescribed representation is profoundly meaningful in the hands of a black artist.
Mark Bradford: Tomorrow Is Another Day is not only a catalog for Bradford’s pavilion project; it is a different kind of book, a substantial publication that blends the biographical with the historical and political. Essays from outside the art world—by Anita Hill, Peter James Hudson, W.E.B. Du Bois and Zadie Smith—narrate a series of interwoven stories about Reconstruction, civil rights and the vulnerable body in urban space, fleshed out with vivid archival photographs and documents. The book also includes significant new texts from curator Katy Siegel and art historian Sarah Lewis, as well as a revealing interview with Bradford, offering a new understanding of the work of one of today’s most influential contemporary artists.
Mark Bradford was born in 1961 in Los Angeles, where he lives and works. Best known for his large-scale abstract paintings that examine the class-, race- and gender-based economies that structure urban society in the United States, Bradford’s richly layered and collaged canvases represent a connection to the social world through materials. Bradford uses fragments of found posters, billboards, newsprint and custom-printed paper to simultaneously engage with and advance the formal traditions of abstract painting.
