Mark Bradford Biography, Age, Gay, Helter Skelter, 60 minutes, Deep Blue

Mark Bradford Biography

Mark Bradford was born on November 20, 1961 in Los Angeles, California.  He is an American artist living and working in Los Angeles.

Mark Bradford Age

Mark Bradford was born in Los Angeles, California on November 20, 1961. He is currently 57 years old as of 2019.

Mark Bradford Early Life|Education

Mark Bradford mother rented a beauty salon in Leimert Park. Bradford moved with his family to a largely white neighborhood in Santa Monica when he was 11, but his mother still maintained her business in the old neighborhood. Bradford worked in her shop at times.When Bradford graduated high school, he obtained his hairdresser’s license and went to work at his mother’s salon.

Bradford began his studies at the California Institute of the Arts in 1991 at the age of 30. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1995 and an MFA in 1997

Mark Bradford Gay

Mark Bradford is gay his partner is Allan DiCastro.

Mark Bradford Helter Skelter

In March 2018, Helter Skelter I, a monumental painting sold for US$12 million, an artist record and the highest-ever auction price achieved by a living African American artist, based on sales results from Phillips and previous auction data.

In 2015 Mark Bradford’s mixed-media collage abstract “Constitution IV” (2013) was sold for $5.8 million at Phillips, an auction high for the artist, just months after ‘Smear’ (2015) was sold for $4.4 million, (the upper estimate was $700,000) at Sotheby’s New York NY.The artist has been exclusively represented by Hauser & Wirth since 2015; he had previously shown with Sikkema Jenkins & Co. and White Cube.

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 endpapers, 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.

Anderson Cooper: 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?

Mark Bradford: I said, “Girl, I think I found a way out of the beauty shop. (LAUGHTER) Girl, I think I found a way outta the beauty shop.” Yeah. Yeah, because I had no idea how I was gonna stop being a hairstylist, because that’s really the only thing that I knew. I didn’t have a problem with being a hairstylist, but it’s all I knew.

Anderson Cooper: It’s incredible to think that 2001 is when you first sold a work, and now

Mark Bradford: I still sell works.

Anderson Cooper: Yeah, you sure do. (LAUGH)

Mark Bradford: I sure do.

His first painting sold for $5,000. 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 Bradford’s in their collection.

It’s called “Deep Blue.” It’s 12 feet high, 50 feet long, and took a full day to install.

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, when 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 fourteen layers of colored paper, and covered it all up with a layer of black.

Anderson Cooper: So there’s a map underneath here?

Mark Bradford: Yes.

Anderson Cooper: Of Watts?

Mark Bradford: Uh-huh (AFFIRM). All these little points are what was looted, what was destroyed. So I kinda 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.

Mark Bradford: My motto was, “If Home Depot didn’t have it, Mark Bradford didn’t use it.” And–

Anderson Cooper: (LAUGH) That’s that’s your– that’s your motto–

Mark Bradford: That’s my motto. That was my motto–

Anderson Cooper: To this day, is that

Mark Bradford: To this to this day

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.

Anderson Cooper: It’s like an archeological dig.

Mark Bradford: It is like an archeological dig. It’s like history. I’m creating my own archaeological or psychiol– psychological digs. Sometimes when I’m digging on my own painting I’m asking myself, “Well, exactly what are you digging for? Where do you want to go child?

Anderson Cooper: A lot of people look at a abstract painting and think, “It’s squiggles, it’s torn paper. I don’t understand it.”

Mark Bradford: Yeah, that’s true. But for me– 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 gr– 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 6’8″, 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.

Mark Bradford: 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– you’re a sissy.”  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.

Anderson Cooper: So even though people they were calling you sissy, it didn’t make you want to try to change yourself?

Mark Bradford: Not really, No not really. I just didn’t want to get my ass whooped

Mark Bradford Deep Blue

Bradford Honors and Awards

In November 2018, Mark Bradford, Allan DiCastro and Eileen Harris Norton were recognized for their work with Art + Practice at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s annual New York gala. In November 2017, Bradford was honored as WSJ magazine’s Art Innovator at their annual Innovator Awards.

In 2016, Mark Bradford was awarded the High Museum of Art’s David C. Driskell Prize. In 2014, Bradford was presented with the US Department of State’s Medal of Arts. In 2013 he was elected as a National Academician by the National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts in New York.

Mark Bradford is also a recipient of a grant from the MacArthur Fellows Program (2009) (also called the “MacArthur Genius Award”). the Wexner Center Residency Award (2009); the Bucksbaum Award, granted by The Whitney Museum of American Art (2006); the United States Artists fellowship (2006), the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2003), the Nancy Graves Foundation Grant (2002), and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2002).

Mark Bradford was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.

Bradford Net Worth