◆ 14 Property from the Collection of John McEnroe Mark Bradford Follow Helter Skelter I signed with the artist's initial, titled and dated '"HELTER SKELTER" m 2007' on the reverse mixed media collage on canvas 365.8 x 1036.3 cm (144 x 407 7/8 in.) Executed in 2007.
Provenance Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York Private Collection, Ohio Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, The New Museum, Collage: The Unmonumental Picture , 16 January - 30 March 2008, p. 130 (illustrated, pp. 20-23) Literature Kelly Shindler, 'Mark Bradford in New York', art21 magazine , 14 January 2008, online (illustrated) Thomas Micchelli, 'Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century Collage: The Unmonumental Picture', The Brooklyn Rail , 6 February 2008, online Christopher Bedford, Mark Bradford , exh. cat., Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, 2010, p. 47 (illustrated, p. 48) Thomas Micchelli, 'Is Mark Bradford the Best Painter in America?', Hyperallergic , 17 November 2012, online Catalogue Essay With Helter Skelter I, Mark Bradford puts forward a statement of heroic ambition that takes the detritus found on the streets of Los Angeles to subtly reflect on the history, social structures and lived experiences of the artist’s urban environment. An intricate network of lines explodes across the full expanse of the over ten metre wide canvas, breaking the gleaming silver surface like cracks in the earth. Fragments of elusive text and imagery begin to reveal themselves upon closer consideration – from a looming large black skull, an American flag, and snippets of words such as ‘CANDY’ or ‘KING’ – only to coalesce into abstraction when seen from afar. Bradford created Helter Skelter I in 2007, concurrently to his series of silver-clad abstractions that debuted at his solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in the same year, the most celebrated of which include Bread and Circuses , 2007, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and Mississippi Goddam , 2007, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. Bradford created Helter Skelter I in tandem with its companion piece Helter Skelter II specifically for the New Museum’s thematic group exhibition Collage: The Unmonumental Picture that opened in January 2008 in New York, bringing together 11 artists to explore ‘the formal and ideological power of juxtaposing found images’. Following almost immediately on the heels of the Whitney show, this exhibition firmly placed Bradford in the contemporary art map, with Thomas Micchelli from the Brooklyn Rail lauding his contribution as, ‘not merely the finest in the show but quite possibly the best contemporary art on view anywhere in New York. Bradford’s behemoth collages…are as tough as the street and just as resistant to simple answers or unearned beauty’ (Thomas Micchelli, 'Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century Collage: The Unmonumental Picture', The Brooklyn Rail , 6 February 2008, online). Exhibited together at the New Museum, the two works introduced a sense of monumentality hitherto unseen in his practice, which most recently found its zenith in Bradford’s installation for the U.S. Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennial, and Pickett’s Charge , currently on view at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Bradford was first catapulted onto the contemporary art scene in 2001, following the inclusion of his multi-layered collage paintings in Thelma Golden’s Freestyle exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem. The groundbreaking exhibition introduced him alongside 27 other emerging African American artists as part of a generation of ‘post-black’ artists who sought to transcend the simplistic label of ‘black artist’, while still deeply exploring and re-defining the complex notions of blackness. Helter Skelter I ’s conception, along with the concurrent series shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 2007, represented the culmination of the profound shift in the artist’s practice, which was characterised by a departure from his earlier grid-like work, towards more decentralised, all-over, and increasingly monumental compositions that have become the hallmarks of his mature visual idiom. Like Scorched Earth , 2006 (Broad Museum, Los Angeles), H
◆ 14 Property from the Collection of John McEnroe Mark Bradford Follow Helter Skelter I signed with the artist's initial, titled and dated '"HELTER SKELTER" m 2007' on the reverse mixed media collage on canvas 365.8 x 1036.3 cm (144 x 407 7/8 in.) Executed in 2007.
Provenance Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York Private Collection, Ohio Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, The New Museum, Collage: The Unmonumental Picture , 16 January - 30 March 2008, p. 130 (illustrated, pp. 20-23) Literature Kelly Shindler, 'Mark Bradford in New York', art21 magazine , 14 January 2008, online (illustrated) Thomas Micchelli, 'Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century Collage: The Unmonumental Picture', The Brooklyn Rail , 6 February 2008, online Christopher Bedford, Mark Bradford , exh. cat., Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, 2010, p. 47 (illustrated, p. 48) Thomas Micchelli, 'Is Mark Bradford the Best Painter in America?', Hyperallergic , 17 November 2012, online Catalogue Essay With Helter Skelter I, Mark Bradford puts forward a statement of heroic ambition that takes the detritus found on the streets of Los Angeles to subtly reflect on the history, social structures and lived experiences of the artist’s urban environment. An intricate network of lines explodes across the full expanse of the over ten metre wide canvas, breaking the gleaming silver surface like cracks in the earth. Fragments of elusive text and imagery begin to reveal themselves upon closer consideration – from a looming large black skull, an American flag, and snippets of words such as ‘CANDY’ or ‘KING’ – only to coalesce into abstraction when seen from afar. Bradford created Helter Skelter I in 2007, concurrently to his series of silver-clad abstractions that debuted at his solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in the same year, the most celebrated of which include Bread and Circuses , 2007, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and Mississippi Goddam , 2007, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. Bradford created Helter Skelter I in tandem with its companion piece Helter Skelter II specifically for the New Museum’s thematic group exhibition Collage: The Unmonumental Picture that opened in January 2008 in New York, bringing together 11 artists to explore ‘the formal and ideological power of juxtaposing found images’. Following almost immediately on the heels of the Whitney show, this exhibition firmly placed Bradford in the contemporary art map, with Thomas Micchelli from the Brooklyn Rail lauding his contribution as, ‘not merely the finest in the show but quite possibly the best contemporary art on view anywhere in New York. Bradford’s behemoth collages…are as tough as the street and just as resistant to simple answers or unearned beauty’ (Thomas Micchelli, 'Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century Collage: The Unmonumental Picture', The Brooklyn Rail , 6 February 2008, online). Exhibited together at the New Museum, the two works introduced a sense of monumentality hitherto unseen in his practice, which most recently found its zenith in Bradford’s installation for the U.S. Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennial, and Pickett’s Charge , currently on view at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Bradford was first catapulted onto the contemporary art scene in 2001, following the inclusion of his multi-layered collage paintings in Thelma Golden’s Freestyle exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem. The groundbreaking exhibition introduced him alongside 27 other emerging African American artists as part of a generation of ‘post-black’ artists who sought to transcend the simplistic label of ‘black artist’, while still deeply exploring and re-defining the complex notions of blackness. Helter Skelter I ’s conception, along with the concurrent series shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 2007, represented the culmination of the profound shift in the artist’s practice, which was characterised by a departure from his earlier grid-like work, towards more decentralised, all-over, and increasingly monumental compositions that have become the hallmarks of his mature visual idiom. Like Scorched Earth , 2006 (Broad Museum, Los Angeles), H
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
