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Mark Bradford is best known for his large-scale, painterly collages that use found materials to demonstrate his interest in mapping communities and underground economies. For these intimate prints (part of a larger series on the same subject), Bradford reproduced signage, or “merchant posters,” he gathered from the streets of South Los Angeles, where he lives. The bright posters advertise services from hair care to traffic school in both English and Spanish, providing a small-scale snapshot of a large, diverse neighborhood and its inhabitants. By turning the ads into a series, Bradford calls attention to issues of place and identity, localized culture, class, and commerce. His process for this work involved two separate metal plates for each image—one for the background, recycled from a scratched, used plate, and another for the smaller advertisement, which he traced and marked to emphasize the original poster’s weathered street origins. This smaller print was made using a photo transfer of each poster and then glued and pressed into to the larger print, a process known as chine-collé.

Details

  • Title: Untitled
  • Creator: Mark Bradford
  • Creator Birth Place: Los Angeles, California
  • Date Created: 2012
  • Location: Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
  • Physical Dimensions: 20 x 16 inches (50.8 x 40.6 cm) each
  • Type: Print
  • Publisher: Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
  • Rights: © Mark Bradford
  • Medium: Etching, photogravure, and chine-collé on paper, edition 4/25
  • Art Form: Print
  • Credit Line: Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Museum purchase in honor of Kimerly Rorschach (founding Mary D.B.T. and James H. Semans Director), with funds provided by Marilyn M. Arthur, Trent Carmichael, Jack and Margaret Neely, Virginia Rorschach, Paula Cooper, Paula and James Crown, Thomas S. Kenan III, Patricia and Thruston Morton, Christen and Derek Wilson, Deborah DeMott, Jason Rubell and Michelle Simkins-Rubell, C.T. Woods-Powell and Richard Powell, Peg Palmer, Trevor Schoonmaker and Teka Selman, Victor and Lenore Behar, Cynthia and Mark Kuhn, Katharine and Bryan Reid, Mindy and Guy Solie, Pepper and Donald Fluke, Ruth and Sidney Cox, Ann and Rhodes Craver, Trena and Richard Hawkins, Ginger and John Jernigan, Patricia and Bill Joklik, Peggy and John Murray, Mary and James Siedow, Eunice and Herman Grossman, Anna Ho and Bob Whalen, Sarah Schroth, Kristine Stiles, Barbara and Joel Smith, Jo and Peter Baer, Diana Evia-Lanevi and Ingemar Lanevi, Sandra Harris, Laura and James Ladd, Sue and Ralph McCaughan, N. Alison Haltom and David McClay, Carol O’Brien, Caroline and Arthur Rogers, Ruth Glesby Wagner, Maureen Berry, Arienne Cheek, Juline Chevalier, Pierce and Kathryn Freelon, Kristen L. Greenaway and Lori S. Ramsey, Angela and Aaron Greenwald, Reneé Cagnina Haynes and Morgan Haynes, Angela O. Terry and A. Daphne Terry, Marianne Wardle, Anne Williams and John Burness, Katharine A. Adkins, J Caldwell, Jamie Dupré, Heather B. Griswold, Brad Johnson, Wendy Hower, Catherine Morris, Kathleen Wright, Molly and Enrico Boarati, Kenneth Dodson, David Eck, Charles J. Carroll, Rachel Goodwin and Benjamin Riseling, Jimmy Jones, Lee Nisbet, Nikki Reeb, and Amy Weaver.

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