Mark Bradford Quotes

For me, the '80s were like the drawing by Botticelli of the nine rings of hell.

The most important imperative to be questioned is the one that tells you to go the the art supply store to be a painter.

If power is abstraction, which many black men, black women, and people of color have very little voice in, well, then I want to sit at the table.

Tobacco and religious organisations.

When I was 18 years old, there was no internet and no gay teen nights. Instead, you went to the clubs and talked to grown men and did grown-up things.

My art practice is very detail-, labor- intensive and I think that that's a way of slowing myself down so that I can hear myself think. That quieter voice has sometimes the more interesting idea, if I can get to it.

That's how I am and how I've always looked at the world. I understood what the pavilions were before I came to Venice, and I knew that wasn't going to be enough for me. I wanted to extend this conversation into something I call urgency. There is urgency with people in crisis. Some communities - often the black community - just live in this urgency.

I never have a problem with being black. I have a problem with the easy association of what that means to some people.

I always made stuff but never thought, I'm going to be an artist.

I remind myself that we need to continue to do the things we believe in and be even more vocal about asking people to do more. This might be my Scorpio talking, but everything feels more intense than before. I'll probably keep doing what I'm doing and shift gears if something comes along. I'm pretty fluid.

Often culture gets stuck in static, traditional narratives. Contemporary ideas give culture elasticity, flexibility, which is always a breath of fresh air. But these ideas shouldn't only be for people who can afford to go to a museum or a symposium in the "better part of town."

A Scorpio, it's just about peeling back the layers. And I'm always surprised at myself-there's a lot under there.