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Practice
Artist
Mark Bradford
(American, born 1961)
Date2003
MediumVideo
DimensionsDuration: 3 minutes
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase
Object number2016.4
Status
Not on viewCopyright© Mark Bradford
Category
Label TextUrban life is the substance, subject, and spirit of Mark Bradford’s art. The artist is best known for his large-scale collaged works on canvas, such as Kingdom Day, 2010, also in the Modern’s collection, which, although predominantly abstract, is embedded with messages of community, awareness, and social justice. He calls his wall-mounted surfaces “paintings,” yet they are actually palimpsests of paper—specifically, merchant flyers, posters, and billboards foraged from the walls and telephone poles of Los Angeles, where he was born and lives today.
Bradford has also undertaken work in other media, including video and installation. In the single-channel video Practice, 2003, he confronts stereotypes of the black male body. The work shows the artist attempting to play basketball while outfitted in a voluminous antebellum hoop skirt in the purple and gold team colors of the Los Angeles Lakers. In his youth, Bradford, a six-foot-seven-inch-tall African American man, was regularly told by strangers that he should become a basketball player. The result is a satire both comic and heartrending, combining slapstick humor and absurdity. As Bradford attempts to dribble and shoot the ball, the wind blows the skirt around him, and the ball escapes his control. He repeatedly falls, gets up, trips, and rolls over, before finally making the shot. The video comments on “practice” of all kinds: athletic, artistic, and social. Its three-minute span is a microcosmic arena of failure, perseverance, and triumph.
Bradford has also undertaken work in other media, including video and installation. In the single-channel video Practice, 2003, he confronts stereotypes of the black male body. The work shows the artist attempting to play basketball while outfitted in a voluminous antebellum hoop skirt in the purple and gold team colors of the Los Angeles Lakers. In his youth, Bradford, a six-foot-seven-inch-tall African American man, was regularly told by strangers that he should become a basketball player. The result is a satire both comic and heartrending, combining slapstick humor and absurdity. As Bradford attempts to dribble and shoot the ball, the wind blows the skirt around him, and the ball escapes his control. He repeatedly falls, gets up, trips, and rolls over, before finally making the shot. The video comments on “practice” of all kinds: athletic, artistic, and social. Its three-minute span is a microcosmic arena of failure, perseverance, and triumph.
2013-14