60 minutes rewind mark bradford is widely considered one of the most important and
influential artists in america today his abstract canvases which often deal with complex social and
political issues hang in major museums around the world and on the walls of big collectors and some
small ones like me bradford's art may look like paintings but there's hardly any paint on them
they're made out of layers and layers of paper which he tears glues power washes and sands in
a style all his own when he began making art in his 30s bradford couldn't afford expensive paint
so he started experimenting with end papers that are used for styling hair
he got the idea while working as a hair stylist in his mom's beauty shop in south
los angeles he was broke struggling and didn't sell his first painting until he was nearly 40.
i heard a story that when you sold your first artwork in 2001 you called up your mom
do you remember what you said to her i said girl i think i found a way out of the beauty shop
girl i think i found a way out of the beauty shop yeah yeah because i had no idea how i was
going to stop being a hair stylist because that's really the only thing that i knew i didn't have a
problem with being a hair stylist but that's all i knew it's incredible to think that 2001 is when
you first sold a work yeah and now i still sell works yeah you sure do i sure do this is the top
his first painting sold for five thousand dollars now they can sell for more than 10 million
this new one was bought by the broad museum in los angeles
they have nine other bradfords in their collection one two three it's called deep blue
it's 12 feet high 50 feet long and took a full day to install that's alright
that is all right none of those colors you see are paint it's all paper layered on canvas
it's abstract but not entirely see those lines that form a grid it's a street map of the watts
neighborhood in los angeles the colored balls show where properties were damaged in 1965
after six days of violent civil unrest protests over police brutality and racial inequality
we first saw the painting nearly a year ago and bradford had just started working on it
in his studio in south los angeles he'd already made the map of watts out of bathroom caulking
the following month when we stopped by again he'd laid down 14 layers of colored
paper and covered it all up with a layer of black so there's a map underneath here
yes of what uh-huh all these little points are what was looted what was destroyed
so i kind of start from a map and then on top of it i think i lay art history and
my imagination all three bradford uses household tools to make his paintings he likes to buy
everything at home depot my motto is if home depot didn't have it mark bradford didn't use it
building up the layers of paper on the canvas is just the beginning of his process
he then starts to peel cut and sand them down which can take months it's like an archaeological
day it is like an archaeological dig it's like history i'm creating my own archaeological or
psycho psychological digs sometimes when i'm digging on my own painting i'm asking myself
well exactly what are you digging for where are you where do you want to go child oh see look look
at that see now see that i like a lot of people get an abstract painting and think it's squiggles
it's torn paper i don't understand it yeah that's true but for me uh those squiggles and torn paper
gives me a space to kind of unpack things like the watts riots
i'm grappling with how i feel about that subject and that material i do grapple with things i
grapple with things personally and you know racially and politically what does it mean
to be me mark bradford has been grappling with that question in his art for the last 18 years
from making paintings out of street posters like those offering predatory loans in low-income
neighborhoods to creating works that address hiv aids racism and the complexity of american history
he's 57 years old now and at six foot eight stands out in a crowd he still lives in south
los angeles where he grew up when he was eight he says he began to get bullied by neighborhood kids
that was the first time i felt different that was the first time i was aware of my sensitivity
that's the first time someone said oh you're you you're a [ __ ] i definitely knew that i had to
learn to navigate in a more cautious way so that i could survive i just never had a problem being me
so even though people they were calling your [ __ ] it didn't make you want to try to
change yourself not really no not really i just didn't want to get my ass whooped
he was raised by his mother janice banks who owned her own beauty salon that's where bradford
would head every day after school i knew that i had to find a way to get across the schoolyard
i knew that my mother was always going to be there once i got across the school yeah
and maybe maybe i was in the hair salon every day watching women get across the school yard
i would hear their stories i would watch them go through and i just thought
if they can do it i most certainly can do it mark bradford started working in the salon as a
teenager eventually becoming a hair stylist it was a safe place where he could be himself but that
feeling disappeared in 1981 when his friends began dying from aids i knew a storm was coming i knew
that in the gut i knew that and people were just dying that's what it felt like to me at 18 years
old i just was thinking how are we going to make it through did you think you would make it through
no no i didn't think i'd make it through thinking he didn't have a future he didn't plan for one
but when he was nearly 30 he took art classes at a junior college and he says it clicked it was the
reading and learning about different scholars and feminism and deconstructing modernism and
all that i just oh man this is i'm really into this not exactly sure what it is but i'm it just
yeah and you'd still work at the hair salon every day and so you'd be studying while at
the harrison oh absolutely they i put the book in their lap and say girl read that back to me
he won a scholarship to the california institute of the arts but struggled to
make money as an artist when he was 39 he finally had a breakthrough i was working on
the head working on a head working on a head working at the beauty salon beauty salon yeah
because i was still working the hair salon and i told you that i just didn't know
that terminology i was hooking it up okay right late at night i was tired as hell too and um just
end papers fell on the floor and i looked down and oh they're translucent oh oh i could use
these end papers are small rectangular tissues used to make permanent waves in hair bradford
began burning the paper's edges and lining them up into grids he glued onto bed sheets i knew i
was onto something i knew this was bridging this material came from a site outside of the paint
store i think early on i was trying to weave these two sides of who i was together the art world
and the sites that i had come from the life that i had led i didn't want to leave any of it i didn't
want to edit out anything private collectors began snapping up his end paper paintings and his career
took off he's now a celebrity in the art world his gallery openings are star-studded events
the latest one in los angeles beyonce and jay-z who owned several bradford's stopped in the 10
paintings in this exhibition sold out before the gallery doors opened look how nice this is
wow it's gorgeous bradford and his partner more than 20 years alan decastro are committed to
using contemporary art and their own money to revitalize the neighborhood bradford grew up in
in 2014 they opened art and practice with eileen harris norden the first collector
to buy bradford's work it's a non-profit complex of buildings that includes a gallery
lecture spaces and his mother's old beauty salon this is the last hair salon that my mom worked
in and then i took it over from her it was in the 90s it was called foxy hair they turned foxy hair
into a center for young adults transitioning out of foster care i would run down the block in here
and buy myself whatever i needed to put back on the hair but we were surprised to learn that
mark bradford still styles hair he does it for some of his former clients from the beauty shop
who are also among his closest friends when you look around does his art make sense to you it
does it's like a map full of necessities i mean i look at it it's beautiful but i don't really
get it get it he gave me um something from his studio a long time ago and i put it in my
this is garage he got like popular i guess and yeah and it's and it's all
torn up and this guy was like you know you have something like a mona lisa i'm like for real
no you're wrong for that i don't see it i don't know you don't see it
i don't but i like how you give a little insight of like what's going on in our community i
know that much about your art so that much i really like the story will continue after this
bradford's latest work continues to focus on difficult and controversial issues
this painting which is prominently displayed in the los angeles county museum of art is called 150
portrait tone and was made in response to the 2016 fatal police shooting of philando castile during
a traffic stop in minnesota he was trying to get out his id and his wallet out his um pocket and he
let the officer know castile's girlfriend diamond reynolds live streamed the incident bradford was
so haunted by her words he made them into this painting please don't tell me this lord please
jesus don't tell me that he's gone it's really the conversation that his girlfriend is having
with multiple people which i was fascinated by why were you fascinated by that how composed she was
she was having a conversation with her daughter in the back seat with philando who was passing away
with god with us facebook and with the policeman all simultaneously it was visual and textual and
heartbreaking and heroic and strong all the same time in another major new work bradford turned his
gaze to the civil war it's called pickett's charge and it's a reimagining of a pivotal
union victory at the battle of gettysburg it was commissioned by the smithsonian's hershorn museum
in washington d.c bradford used as his starting point blown-up photos of a 19th century panoramic
painting of pickett's charge a painting which offers a romanticized view of the confederacy
he then added layers of paper and cords over it then carefully gouged shredded and ripped it apart
they almost feel like lacerations almost scarring that's what those feel like and a little bit like
bullet wounds like you're really punctures it's a 360 degree painting that raises many questions
in bradford's mind particularly about how we look at history it's looking at it through a different
lens yes that's the feeling that i wanted you to have that history was laying on top of it
it gouging into it erasing it bits of it showing it's kind of me kind of revising it so is this a
more accurate representation of history i don't really believe history is ever fully accurate
it's acknowledging that it's acknowledging the gaps right the things we don't know so many people
have come to see pickett's charge the hershorn has extended the exhibition for three more years
bradford is already working on new paintings for shows in china london and new york do
you worry about the vagaries of the art world what is popular today 20 years from now oh no
no no no i wouldn't have no i have never i mean art has value because people believe it has value
no i think art has value because it has value because i'm not going to wait for somebody else
to tell my work has value i certainly wasn't going to wait on people to tell
me i had value i'd probably still be waiting i just it has value because i think it has value
and then if other people get on the value you know mark brad for value training great