wow American Are New Perspective The Artist as Urban Geographer Mark Bradford and Julie Mebretu Kathryn Brown In a provocative discussion about maps and the imagina- tion, scholar Ricardo Padrén has argued that maps pro- vide an imaginary relationship with the territory they are supposed to represent instead of a model of reality. “We do not make maps of spaces that we can, without effort take in with our eyes,” he notes. “We only map what we cannot see, in order to be able to see it."! The activities ‘of map reading and imagining a relationship with incompletely known spaces are central co the art created by Mark Bradford and Julie Mehretu.? In the collages and paintings of these ewo artists, both currently based in the United States, conventional grid structures characteristic of modern Western mapping and architectural drawing, are reinvented. Although their work differs radically in style, points of overlap can be discerned in their question- ing of graphic and textual conventions associated with map reading, manipulation of grids, and use of visual layering to convey multiple perspectives on the shape and architecture of city spaces. ‘These two artists make what can be called “absorptive maps,” which invite the viewer co enter their Fictional space in an attempt to capture multiple imaginary experiences and interpretations of ‘metropolitan life In the late 1970s Rosalind Krauss published an essay about the ubiquity of grid structures in modernist arts pointing to, in particulas, the works of Kasimir Malevich, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Piet Mondrian, Krauss suggests that che grid has been emblematic of the modernist ambition within visual art, offering “a way of abrogating the claims of natural objects to have an onder particular to themselves.” The grid, she says, “declares the space of art to be at once autonomous and autotelic” and demonstrates “hostility to literature, to narrative, to Volume 24, Nance 3 © 2010 Smithsonian InstonMark Bradford, Las Moser, 2004 Miued media on canvas, 125 1904 in, Tae Galery, London. Photo © 2009 Tate, Landon, ‘courtesy Sikkema Jenkin &€ Co. Now Yorke discourse.” Ic is easy to see why Krauss makes this claim. The grid seems like an exces- sively contrived structure, an imposition on the observed world, and a means of placing, organizing, and flattening objects onto a legible but impersonal structure. AS a resul Krauss suggests thac the grid resists development and remains “impervious to change.”> Bradford and Mehretu move away from this modernist tradition. Instead of using the grid to construct a depersonalized space or to suggest an autonomous realm of art, both artists transform the pictorial and interpretative conventions associated with the grid and suggest ways in which is figurative space can make visible diverse relations between individuals, communities, and the city. As a result, the grid becomes a dynamic structure capable of communicating a variety of subjective experiences of the urban environment Where Krauss interprets the use of the grid in the early twentieth century as a means of insulating art and creating a space chat is “flat,” “geometricized,” and “anti-real,” these artists active in the twenty-first century use the grid format to uncover and represent connections between persons and places. They achieve this effect by destabilizing the grid as an imposition of visual order and using techniques that suggest the metaphoric absorption of subjective experience into the representation. They incorporate found and discarded materials into the painted surface, represent buildings from a roving point of view, and use large canvases that cause viewers to reflect on their own physical relationship to the scene. Echoing Padrén’s point, Bradford and Mchretu redesign the ‘grid ro trace unseen characteristics of familiar locations and to prompt an imaginative self placement of the viewer in relation to locations that lie beyond the boundaries of his or her lived experience. 02 Fall 20103 Jasper Johns, Map, 1961. Oil on ‘arwas, 6 6 in 8 10 fe 34 in “The Muscum of Modern Art, New York, Gilt of Mr and Mes. Rebere C. Sell © Jasper Johns/ Licensed by VAGA, New York. Photo © The Muscum ‘of Modern Art/ Licensed by SCALA/An Resouree, New York Collage, Map, and Palimpsest Bradford experiments with the mechanical objectivity of geid structures familiar from acrial-view maps. Large-scale collages such as Across 110th Street (fig. 1) and Las Moscos (Gig. 2) exploit conventions associated with cartographic means of imaging a chosen ter- rain, suggesting a stripped-down, aerial perspective. Like many of Bradford's city views, Across 110th Sereee resembles the shape of any number of latge cities from a viewpoint ‘made familiar to observers by satellite imagery of the Earth. On the one hand, an objective view of a heavily populated urban environment is suggested by the representation of that space from a maximally distant viewpoint. On the other hand, the specificity of the title connotes a contrasting type of spatial relationship, namely, individuals’ habicual means of orientation within cities by way of street names. Asin Bradford's Orbit, fom 2007, in which a basketball is depicted as having been propelled into space, Across 110th Sieet exploits the contrast between everyday life and a form of mechanical visual representation that is the antithesis of embodied looking. “The juxtaposition of a distant viewpoint with a ttle that implies a position within the dexailed topography of the city mirrors the physical composition of the finished artwork. Bradford's “maps” are mixed-media collages composed of scraps of signage, posters, discarded advertising, and other materials peeled off billboards and found on the city streets, Although the various materials are sanded down and painted over when they are affixed to the canvas, lettering and imagery fiom the underlying strata remain visible through the paint surface. By layering scraps of paper and cardboard over an intricate network of intersecting lines, often created from pieces of ewine affixed to the canvas, Bradford relies on the formal dis- cipline of the grid as a conventional way of ordering visual information even as he suggests the precarious nature of that structure. His maps combine language and image, surface paint and material depth in such a way that che viewer’ attention is pulled between the content Of the work and its surface. The tension between reading the representational content of a ‘map and focusing on the forms and colors of its physical surface was famously brought 0 the fore by Jasper Johns in the early 1960s in his map of the United Scates (fig, 3). In chat ciated y 13 American Arepainting, the viewer simultaneously recognizes the abstract shapes of a map and text and is, also attracted to the colored surface of the work itself. IF maps are typically presented and received a8 a source of scientific information, Johns deliberately establishes the surface of his painting as an obstacle to the communication and reception of that knowledge by al- lowing it to obscure sections of the underlying map. Playing off the supposed objectivicy of| the familiar map forma, Johns creates a virtuosic elaboration of the paine surface in which scrutiny by the artistic eye is set against the proces of scientific observation. Like Johns'’s Map, the superimposition of materials in Bradford's collages requires the viewer to recognize different forms of representation that overlap and obscure each other's meaning, In Bradford's output, however, the theme of pictorial legibility becomes particularly acute. Standing before Los Moscos—which is more than ten feet high and almost sixteen Feet wide—the viewer's gaze is pulled berween different points of visual interest. The overwhelming darkness of the canvas is punctuated by points of Auorescent pink and yellow; straight lines radiate from repeated starburst structures to give the impression of street layouts in a densely populaced city. Competing with these large structural components is a miscellany of visual materials embedded in the surface. “This includes scraps of advertisements, torn or blurred photos, fragments of telephone numbers, and partially obscured lettering that invite the viewer to approach the canvas to read its content rather chan simply taking.in the collage as a whole. The interplay bbecween these two structural aspects of Los Moscos raises questions about the grid’s claim to objectivity: as fragments of texts and images force their way to the surface, they disrupt the regularity of ehe overarching visual structute. ‘The difficulties chac arise in reading Bradford's map and its consticuent parts arc is mately linked to the actual experience of living in urban spaces. It is this Feature of the ‘map that distinguishes Bradford's use of the grid from the tradition discussed by Krauss. To illuserate this point, itis helpful to compare Bradford's Las Moscos with Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-43). No human figure is represented in either work. “The image of a city (or a section of i) is constructed from a grid, and movement is created within the visual field by the strategic placement of colored patches that draw the viewer's gaze to different points on the surface. But unlike Mondrian’s pared-down composition, in which the grid eliminates navuralistc form, Bradford’s work suggests the absorption of individual experience into the representation by transforming one encounter with urban space (the way in which individuals attend to printed informa- sion when traversing the city) into the experience of comprehending the representation of the city as a whole, ‘The effect of the grid format is altered in Bradford's work, not by changing its form but by changing its compositional content. Standing before either Los Moscos or Across 110th Street, che viewer is aware that the maximal viewing distance implied by the aerial viewpoine is intimately linked to embodied visual experience at street level, The resulting connection between these two ways of looking relates the pictorial content of the art object simultancously to satellite imagery and to the ephemeral advertising images embedded in the works’ surfaces.6 As «result, Bradford (fig. 4) dramatizes a way in which arc objects compete for attention not only with scientific imagery but also with the vast array of pictures and texts within the built environment that solicit the viewer's attention on a daily basis. Culeural geographer Denis Cosgrove has commented on the overwhelming amoune of written language in contemporary cities and the tension that chis generates between textual and pictorial legibility in the representation and regulation of urban space. Describing. the competitive presence of words, phrases, and texts thar confront individuals on the strect, he argues that “image and text, whose effective harmonizing is eartography’s signal contribution to spatial representation, has become disjoinced, and their falling od Fall 20104 Mark Bradford. Photo, Juan Carls ‘Avendano, couresySikkema Jenkins 8 Co,, New York apart denotes the erosion of a relationship that underpinned urban modernity”? In Cosgrove's analysis, not only has the volume of written information in modern cities radically increased, but the speed of its turnover and replacement contributes to the illegibility of metropolitan spaces as a whole. Bradford exploits the tensions that exist between text and image in both the experience and representation of the city. Rather than demonstrating the process of disintegration described by Cosgrove, however, he fuses different forms of textual and visual representation to produce 2 new way of imagin- ing urban space: the multiple layers of written language and advertising that inform individuals experiences of the streets become a means of making legible a conception of the city as a whole. ‘Through his fusion of these two sources of visual information, Bradford offers a way of overcoming the problem of urban illegibility famously identified by Michel de Certeau in the Invention of the Everyday. Certeau contrasts the totalizing perspective of the map reader with the fragmentary experience of the city by its inhabitants. He as- serts that when people are embedded in the physical space of the city, the surrounding space is rendered illegible: people may physically enjoy a particular space, but visually and, to some extent, intellectually, they cannot atcain the necessary distance that per- mits comprehension of its entirety.* Bradford’s maps, being made in parc of materials taken from che street, offer a counterpoint to this notion. ‘he illegibility of individual urban experience at ground level is transformed into a new way of conceptualizing the same environment. Bradford's works dramatize the literal absorption of text into image and, asa result, metaphorically incorporate points of view from above and within the depicted scene. Bradford’s use of materials taken from the street has further repercussions on how the viewer experiences the artwork, First, neither the sueface of the work nor the map represented on it is flat. Instead, the layers of paper, cardboard, and signage imbue the representation with a complex structure created over time, in which some layers, of meaning are uncovered, but others remain, quite literally, buried. The strata of the collage surface thus become a way of constructing memories of the space from which the materials were taken, Advertising materials, like che products to which they refer, are subject co rapid turnover; by presenting the unfolding of time, Bradford's works chart the layering and perpetual replacement of language and information that characterize the changing space of the city. The enduring impersonality of the grid as described by Krauss is thus subtly deconstructed, since it is formed from ephemeral macer that make up a crucial aspect o} iduals’ everyday visual exper of the urban spaces they inhabit. Bradford’ collages dramatize the idea that maps require their readers to understand various conventions in order to read the information they 105. American AreJulie Mehretu, Stade 1, 2004, Ialeand acrylic on canvas, 108 x 144 in. Carnegie Museum of Are Ptsburgh, Gilt of Jeanne Greenberg Rohaty and Nicolas Roharyn aad AW. Mallon Acquistion Endowment Fund (Julie Mebretu, Phow, Richard Stoner, petmision of the artist contain and that maps also create conventions relating to the organization and communication of knowledge about the spaces they represent. It has been pointed out thar the ticle of Bradford!s Los Moscos is not a place-name bur a slang reference to migrant workers in Los Angeles who are mostly of Hispanic origin.» Just as Bradford creates an aerial viewpoint of the city through the use of found materials, so too the sense of place is generated by rendering visible traces of a particular community. ‘On this map, language does not fulfill the typical carto- ‘graphic function of labeling and demarcation; instead, ic provides evidence of che existence of communities whose presence is nor necessarily brought to light on traditional maps of the city. In this regard, Bradford not only calls into question the type of knowledge traditionally conveyed by maps but opens up the signifying potential of maps to permit a new way of conveying information about places and the people that inhabic them, Emblematic Sites and Orientation ‘Whereas Bradford experiments with a recognizable map format that ereates a layered archaeological site within a grid structure, Mehretu offers a more dynamic interpretation of ways in which contempo- rary urban experience may be mapped in visual ar. Her works exploie the typical aerial viewpoint of maps but destabilize the grid by juxtaposing dynamic lateral points of view on the depicted scene. The result is an unsettling of spatial relations. While Bradford main- tains an overall focus on the representation of urban space from an aerial viewpoint, Mehretu imposes a multiplicity of perspectives on emblematic pieces of architecture. ‘Mehtetu’s Stadia series (2003~4) is a good example of the artist’ use of architectural motifs to figure a variety of experiences within urban space. Although the paintings are based on actual stadia in three coun- tries (the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States), they eschew geographic specificity and trans- form each building into an iconographic, atemporal space." The works juxtapose vertical and oblique lines and mix pictorial and cartographic representation in a way that mirrors che physical and visual experience of looking at, and occupying different positions in, a stadium, Ar che same time, however, the viewer is not provided with any derail of a sport or activity taking pplace in the arena. In Stadia HI (ig. 5), which shows us the tiers of a stadium, the viewer has the illusion of 106 Full 2010 Abeing placed in the foreground of the fictional space, an effect creared by the way in which the viewer's gaze is invited to move around within the depicted scene. On the one hand, the viewer appears to be “placed” in the upper reaches of one of the tiers of the stadium, an effect that is enhanced by the use of tradicional perspective that draws the gaze toward a central vanishing point. On the other, however, the repetition of shapes on different visual planes breaks up the coherence of the space as a whole. The viewer's gaze is first drawn toward the dense mass of colored flags and geometric shapes that fill the upper chird of che canvas but is then guided swiftly back to the center by the swirls and curves that evoke the shape of the stadium and mark the focal point of the (unseen) action. Like Bradford's works, Mchretu's paintings involve a form of visual layering, but whereas Bradford experiments with different physical layers of material, Mehretw (fig. 6) creates surface depth by superimposing layers of drawing and pigment. She uses a grid, often in the form of a wire-frame architectural drawing, as the substructure of her compositions.** The contours of the grid are progressively eroded, however, by the application of successive layers of acrylic paint that are sanded and polished to create a palimpsest of semitransparent, glassy surfaces. Mchretu has stared that in this working ‘method she tries to mimic “the vellum thar old maps are drawn on, ‘The earliest layet was the earliest time, so it would have its own geology, history, archaeology, in the painting.""? In an article on historical links between cartography and art, Ronald Recs points our that representations of towns and cities in Western medieval painting and cartog- raphy were not addressed to sight alone—the spaces “were meant to be experienced, not just scen.” Rather chan attempting to impart an objective sense of reality, both ‘maps and paintings were concerned with communicating an affective experience of the world and conveying what it felt like to be “a pedestrian walking on the streets and seeing the buildings from many different sides."! Mehretu’s renderings of urban space create a similar effect. The destabilizing of a stable prospect and consequent depiction of movement re-create the sensation of being in the spaces that form the subject of the work. The dynamism of the underlying grid thus mirrors the movement of the restless eye that secks to take in the broadest possible range of aspects on the space before it. “The shifting between acrial and oblique views of key sites becomes the basis of a physical relation between viewer and canvas. Mehrect has explained: wanted shere 10 be a physical relationship between the body and the painting, so you could see it from a distance and have a sense of the whole, but as you carne closer and closer, the entire picture would disipare, explode. You could only be involved in one area you were ooking as, and have a sense ofthat place, but know that it multiplied around you, and that many more events were happening.™ “The process described by Mchretu raises a question discussed above in connection with Bradford's collages, namely, the extent to which the viewer’ physical relationship to, and visual experience of, a represented space enables the viewer to make sense of that space. The experience of looking at one of Mehretu’s paintings may be described as the inverse of the process I discussed in relation to Bradford's collages. While Bradford takes materials from the strect (including the experience of being on the street) to make those materials signify the relevant space from an aerial viewpoint, Mehretu emphasizes the splintering of the panorama. Mirroring Certeau’s point that individuals within urban spaces fail co grasp the totalizing gaze of the map reader, Mehretu’s experiments 108 Ful 20106 Julie Mehrew. Photo, Marl Hanuer, couresy of che artist highlight the multiplicity of individual experiences within and on a single location by establishing a relationship between different areas of the repre- sentation and the physical presence of the viewer. The geid is invoked simul- taneously to structure the composition and to shatter its unity ‘The dynamism of shape and line in Stadia II simultaneously highlights multiple individual perspectives on a key location and suggests the drawing together of wider communities and nations. The flags of various countries are depicted in the multicolored surface of the work. In some cases, a flag is shown in ies entirety, while in ‘others only a key national symbol ot familiar combination of colors can be seen, Matching the iconic status of the stadium itself, the participants in its spectacle are depicted in the form of instantly recognizable visual signs. The stadium is presented both as.a location of collective experience and of cross-cultural transactions that viewers are accustomed to absorbing through symbols, images, and media presentations.'5 ‘The inclusion of a ver- sion of the NBC peacock logo in the lower right-hand corner of Stadia IIT (2004) highlights this theme and, as in Bradford's «ase, implies an ironic parallel between art and advertising imagery. Rather than simply experimenting with the way in which individuals experience a key public location, ‘Stadia HIT probes the ways in which such a location is itself transformed into an image and mediated on a worldwide broadcasting stage. Mehretu’s focus on key architectural locations has two principal pictorial functions. First, such locations serve as emblematic but changing sites of individual and collective experience. This instability is symbolized by the shifting viewpoine of the individual, the ‘mulkiplicity of perspectives imposed by transient crowds, and the architectural instability of buildings that are understood to change through time and use. Emphasizing the way in which emblematic locations within a city signify the convergence of diverse inter ests and outlooks, Mehretu has stated: “I've always been interested in arenas where you can witness many, many people at once; they offer a different perspective on the city, che city being a metaphor for a community.”"” In her are Mchretu develops the idea thac cie- ies and their constituent architecture are at once spaces that embody the fragmentation of collective experience and the bringing together of individuals through the needs and interests of groups consistently engaged in shopping, travel, entertainment, labor, and the administration of social organization. Second, Mchretu’s geographies of the built environment represent a way in which space is organized in the social imagination and offer a means by which individuals 109 American ArtJulie Mehreca, Gry Spc (dats) 2006, Inkand acrylic on canvas, 72x96 in, Saint Louis Are “Muscum, Gift of the Honorable and Mrs. Thomas F Eagleton by cachange, Siteman Contemporary ‘Are Fand, nd funds given by ily Raub Palit © Julie ‘Mchrets. Photo, Erma Esewick, permission ofthe artist locate themselves and others within that space. Whereas Cosgrove and Certeau assert that individuals who inhabit modern cities are visually disoriented, Mehretu shows the ability of architecture co render particular territories legible by providing key points of recognition for individuals and communities. In this way, her works undermine aerial-view maps as the primary means of organizing an image of a selected terrain and instead promote a way in which cities can be effectively mapped and understood from a position within that same space. ‘With theit emphasis on key architeceural locations and the figuring of affective expetience, Mehretu’s works develop and transform 2 pictorial tradition of representing city spaces that goes back to the Middle Ages. Much Western medieval imagery used ideograms such as cicles, walls, and stockades to represent the physical limits of the city. As various historians have argued, regardless of what is depicted inside the relevant space, a consistent set of graphic conventions was used to illustrate the relationship between individuals and the city.14 Mehretu’s rwenty-first-century paintings extend this pictorial tradition. In so doing, however, the artist shatters the authority of a single, overarching viewpoint on the scene and calls into question the very possibility of a totalizing comprehension of that space. 110 Fill 2010Mehretu’s recent works statkly dramatize the question of how individuals make visual sense of their surroundings by suggesting limits on the viewers ability to impose ‘order on the fictional space of the artwork and on the environment represented in it. Grey Space (distractor) (Bg. 7) employs many of the techniques found in the Stadia series but no longer represents a particular location. It is possible to decipher, beneath the sharply intersecting colored shapes on the surface, the familiar grid patterns of an architectural drawing, but the multiple, intersecting layers of the finished painting prevent che drawing from cohering inco a single, stable form. As a result, the building, delineated in fragments by the underlying grid, remains buried under layers of opaque and semitransparent color. Just as an individual in a modern city is constantly solicited by the multitude of visual information around her, the viewer of Mehretu’s work is permanently distracted as she moves imaginatively around the different points of incerest on the canvas. Through the imposition of fragmented gridlike patterns that echo the form of a serect layout, neither architectural nor geographic motifs coalesce into a fixed image of the metropolis. Instead, recognizable shapes that make up the cityscape exist in permanent tension with the amorphous gray space that threatens to occlude them. ‘This visual tension is further heightened by the juxtaposition of angular colored lines and criangles that direct the viewer’ attention to differenc focal points of the painting and the more fluid parts of the underlying drawing. As in Stadia Il, Grey Space (distrac- 407) contains sections of drawing and brushwork composed of soft curves, shading, and hatch marks that are alternately dramatic or gently lyrical in effect. Commentators have focused on the gestural aspects of Mehrevu’s brushmarks, contrasting them with the more rigidly structured architectural and planning designs with which they are combined. Mehretu herself has drawn a link beeween her drawings and Chinese cal- ligraphy paintings, in which there is “a desire co describe the cosmos in a certain way, ‘with marks thas are signifiets, towards the cosmos as a system."!9 Grey Space (distractor) bears witness to this connection as the semi-submerged drawing moves from angular architectural design to a delicately rendered scene of undulating hills in the lower right-hand comer. A quiet glimpse of the natural world momentarily lures the viewer out of the geometry of the urban grid. A series of black and yellow lines and triangles cutting through this section of the canvas ensures, however, that the viewer’s attention is immediately drawn back into the explosive grids layered on top of cach other within the langer gray space, In their imaginative engagement with urban spaces, Bradford and Mehretu exploit an important difference between the viewers visual experience of maps and pictures, namely, che way in which we differentiate between represented objects in pictures and comprehend the interpretative conventions associated with reading maps.2" Invited to look at an artwork and to recognize a set of graphic conventions, the viewer is also asked to look still further and to examine the detailed information encoded in the surface and structure of the finished product in order to understand the information that is omitted from or communicated about the depicted space. As examples of absorptive maps, the collages and paintings of these two artists epitomize multiplicities of perspective, of layering, of narrative, and of community. ‘The claim to objective knowledge enjoyed by ‘maps is undermined by the insistence on subjective engagement with particular loca- tions and the traces left by those who pass through them. Thave argued that the cartographic experimentation as presented by both Bradford and Mchretu also offers a new way of understanding the functioning of grid structures in the modernist eradition of Western art. Rather than comprehending the grid solely as an autonomous, anti-real structure characteristie of early-twentieth-century art, the LL American Aveviewer is invited to interpret the grid as a dynamic means of representing the social and visual flux of the city. In this respect, the grid motif links the works of Bradford and Mehretu to a key iconographic tradition in Western art. Yer each artist reinvents the structure and representational capacities of the grid to map the shifting nature of contemporary social relations. By absorbing the viewer's encounters with the street into the fictional space of the works, the cartographic experiments of Bradford and Mehrera function as imaginary maps capable of mobilizing a variety of visual experiences in connection with our understanding of art history as well as our perception of the urban environment and our place in it. Notes 1 Ricardo Paden, “Mapping Imaginary Worlds,” in Maps: Fdng Our Place in he Worl, ed. James R. Alcerman and Robert W. Karrow Je. (Chicago: Unis. of Chicago Pres, 2007), 255-87, at 286. See also Denis Woods suggestion that mape give ura “realty tha exeveds our vision... We ae aways mapping the invisible or the unattainable or the erasable, Wood, The Power of Maps (New York: Guilford Pres, 1992), 4-5. ‘Mack Bradford was born in 1961 in Los Angeles and was educated atthe California Institute of the Arcs in tha ci, He as been the recipient ofthe Buckbaum Award (Whicney Museum of American Art, A USA Fellowship Aveard, and the Louis Comfore Tiany Foundation Award, among others. Recent ‘ola and «we perion exhibitions have taken place atthe Wexner Center for the Ars, Columbus, Ohio, Sila Jenkins 8 Co., New York, che Cincinnati Art Maseum, and the Whitney Museum of Art ‘New York. Bradford lives and works in Los Angeles, Julie Merc was born in 1970 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Afer moving to the United Seats with her family in 1977, she attended the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. She has received numerous grants and residencies, including a ‘MacArthur Fellowship and the American Are Award of the Whitney Muscum of American Art Her recent solo exhibitions have taken place atthe Guggenheim muscums in Berin and New York, the ‘Kunseveein in Hannover, the Lousiana Museum in Humlebaek, Denmark, and the Detroit Insicute ‘of Arts Mchcet lives and works in New York City 3 Rosalind Krauss, “Grids,” October 9 (Summer 1979}: 50-64, quotes at 52 and 50. Fora discussion of connections between the ue of pid structures in art and cartography inthe Renaissance, se Samuel Y. Edgerton Je, "From Mental Matix to Mappamundi to Christian Empire: The Heritage of Ptolemaic (Cartography inthe Renaissance” in Avs and Cartography: Si Hisorical Esay, ed. David Woodward (Chicago: Univ, of Chicago Press, 1987), 10-50. See alto Thelma Golden’ foreword to Catherine De Zeghet, Julie Mebreru: Drawings (New York: Riaoli, 2007), 18, 4 Although Bradford's collages eypically comprise materials found on che streets near his seudio in Los Angeles, the spaces depicted on the canvas are not limived by the topology of any particular ei. For an overview of Bradfords are sce Seven Nelion, Mark Bradford (New York: Sikkema Jenkins 8 Co,, 2006}; Max Andrews, “Mark Bradford,” in Chrissie les and Philippe Vergne, Whtrney Biennial 2006: Day for Night (New York: Whitney Museum of American Arc, 2006); and Christopher Bedford ‘tal, Mark Bradford (New Haven: Yale Univ Pres, in association with the Wexner Center forthe Ans, 2010) 5 Piet Mondeian, Bradway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43, The Museum of Modern Art, New York 6 In Aerow 110th Soret tis point is emphasized by the inclusion of an advertisement ofan Absolut Vodka bode, Because iis turned upside down, the image disrupts the viewers usual reading ofthe advertise- ment. A more striking dissonance is created, however, through the mismatch in scale beeween the close- up image of the botle and the vastly distanced viewpoint on the city as a whole 7 Denis Cosgrove, “Carto-Cir" in Ee/ Where: Mapping New Caregaphie of Nerwork and Territories, Janec Abrams and Petr Hall (Minneapolis Univ. f Minnesota Design Institute, 2006), 148-57, a 149. 8 Michel de Certeau, Linventon de quosidien, 2 vols (Pacis: Gallimard, 1990), 1:14 9) Career E, Foster, Neither New nor Corrs: New Work by Mark Bradford (New Haven: Yale Unit Pres, 2007),9. 112 Fall 201010. For further background on this point, se Rebecea R. Hare, “Mapping, Erasing, Dsifing” in Siemon Allen etal Jie Mehr, Cty Stings (Devote Detroit Insctte of At, 2007), 57-58, 11 Joan Young, “Layering and Erasure: An Incioducton to Julie Mere,” in Young et ala lie Mebnen, Gn Arca (New York: Guggenheim Muscumm Publictoas, 2005), 29-33, at 31 12 On Mehrecs visual layering techniques, see Janet Abrams, “Epic Vessels," in Abrams and Hall, Elie Where, 248, 15. Ronald Recs, “Links between Carography and Ae,” Gragnaphical Review 70, no. 1 (January 1980): 61-78, 66. 14 Mebetu quoted in Abrais, “Epic Vessel” 249 15 On the ross-culural themes in Mehrecus works, see Kinsey Katchka, “The Meaning in Mobility” in Allen et al, fie Mole, City Stings, 61-62. 16 Fora discusion of connections berwcen architectural practice and che changing socal uses of buildings, see Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn: Whas Happen after Theyre Buils (New York: Penguin, 1994}. 17 Quoted in Abrams, “Epic Vests” 248, 18 Chiara Fragont, A Dinan Cit: Images of Urban Experience tn the Medicnal World, rans. William McCusig (Princeton: Princeton Unt Pes, 1991), 6-11. See abo the role played by medieval sign the ‘ory in che interpretation of art objecs inthis contex as discussed in Reading Medienal Images The Art ‘Hinorian an she Objet ed, Elizabeth Sears and Thelma K. Thomas (Aan Atbor: Univ of Michigan Press, 2002), 16-17, 19 De Zeghe,fulie Mebrenu: Drawings, 21-22, a 25 20 For discussion of this poine in connection with maps in che works of Johannes Vermeer, se Richard Wollheim, Painting as an Ae (London: Thames & Huson, 1987), 60-62. 113 American Art