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Material and Visual Worlds Speaker Series Feb. 25: Vance Byrd, Grinnell College
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In this talk, he will focus on Mark Bradford's (1961– ) Pickett's Charge (2016–17), which is on display at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. He will argue that this African-American abstract and conceptual artist's installation teaches us valuable lessons about nationhood, the violence of war and racism through his material reworking of a foundational narrative about the United States of America. His installation is based on Paul Dominique Philippoteaux's (1846–1913) Battle of Gettysburg panorama from the year 1883, which is located today at the Gettysburg National Military Park. The subject of this panorama painting in Gettysburg is Major General George Pickett's compliance with Commander Robert E. Lee's orders to charge the opposing forces on July 3, 1863, a decision which ultimately led to Confederate defeat against the Union army. The French panorama artists were faithful to the historical outcome of this battle, but the subsequent support of regional hereditary associations, the panorama's proximity to the actual battle site, and the performative context of annual re- enactments contributed to the painting's association with the Lost Cause. Against the backdrop of current debates on Civil War commemoration, then, the Gettysburg Cyclorama (1883) could be considered an objectionable image. Rather than attempting to make the violent magnitude of the Battle of Gettysburg comprehensible for visitors at the museum, he will propose in this talk that Bradford invites us to question history through his material and physical practice. Rather than using burnt end papers or found merchant posters from his Los Angeles neighborhood, the hallmark of his material practice, Bradford quotes and recomposes in Pickett's Charge the original cyclorama image through digital collage (modification of scale, pixilation, juxtaposition and mirroring, augmented color, repetition) and his physical labor of décollage (cutting, tearing, picking, lateral pulls of cord underneath paper, burns, application of liquids and adhesives). By making destruction and ruination visible and commenting on his methods in video recordings and audio guides for the installation, Bradford rejects the communication of a conventional narrative about defeat and victory in the American Civil War. Moreover, careful examination of the canvas reveals that there are layers of history before and after Gettysburg that have yet to be explored. Bradford thus calls into question the durability of myth making about freedom and progress in America's past and present, a message, in my view, consistent with the artist's ongoing social justice engagement in communities of color and his recent turn to American history in his oeuvre.