WEBVTT 00:00:18.899 --> 00:00:21.200 <v ->We are at, in the 21st century,</v> 00:00:21.200 --> 00:00:23.720 at the head of an ever-expanding past 00:00:23.720 --> 00:00:25.470 or an ever-expanding history. 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:31.640 We only move into the 21st century 00:00:31.640 --> 00:00:33.640 on the foundation of things 00:00:33.640 --> 00:00:36.650 that have been established long, long ago. 00:00:42.960 --> 00:00:44.760 The principles that govern the way 00:00:44.760 --> 00:00:48.440 visual representation works  are still the same principles 00:00:48.440 --> 00:00:54.188 that governed the way they worked 500 years ago, a thousand years ago, two thousands years ago. 00:00:56.880 --> 00:00:58.720 Makes perfect sense to me 00:00:58.720 --> 00:01:02.360 to go back to the origins of these things 00:01:02.360 --> 00:01:03.856 and pick up from there, 00:01:05.400 --> 00:01:06.840 to take up the challenge, really, 00:01:06.840 --> 00:01:10.520 to find another way to make  these things seem fresh, 00:01:10.520 --> 00:01:11.987 even if they are not. 00:01:21.760 --> 00:01:23.120 The painting "Many Mansions," 00:01:23.120 --> 00:01:26.160 which I finished back in 1995, 00:01:26.160 --> 00:01:31.194 it's very classical structure  that the imagery is hung on. 00:01:34.040 --> 00:01:36.360 When I started out, the  artists that I really admired, 00:01:36.360 --> 00:01:40.520 people like Jericho, that whole  genre of history painting, 00:01:40.520 --> 00:01:42.440 that grand narrative style of painting 00:01:42.440 --> 00:01:44.760 was something that I really  wanted to position my work 00:01:44.760 --> 00:01:46.002 in relation to. 00:01:46.840 --> 00:01:50.000 And so in order to achieve  a similar kind of authority 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:51.600 that those paintings had, 00:01:51.600 --> 00:01:54.738 I had to adopt a similar structural format. 00:01:58.091 --> 00:01:59.160 I think in general 00:01:59.160 --> 00:02:01.400 the paintings have been really well received, 00:02:01.400 --> 00:02:03.560 but there's a lingering controversy 00:02:03.560 --> 00:02:07.120 around the sort of unequivocally black, 00:02:07.120 --> 00:02:09.414 kind of emphatically black figures. 00:02:10.760 --> 00:02:12.680 I wouldn't have done them if I didn't feel it, 00:02:12.680 --> 00:02:17.680 but I tend to think having that extreme of color, 00:02:17.680 --> 00:02:20.217 that kind of black, is amazingly beautiful. 00:02:22.600 --> 00:02:23.928 And powerful. 00:02:34.600 --> 00:02:37.880 The first painting I did was way back in 1980, 00:02:37.880 --> 00:02:39.560 was a painting called "A Portrait of the Artist 00:02:39.560 --> 00:02:41.600 as a Shadow of His Former Self." 00:02:41.600 --> 00:02:46.120 and it was the first time  I had used this simplified, 00:02:46.120 --> 00:02:49.400 kind of reductive representation  of a black figure. 00:02:49.400 --> 00:02:50.800 And so that painting was the one 00:02:50.800 --> 00:02:52.880 that established the black figure 00:02:52.880 --> 00:02:55.141 as a mode of operating for me. 00:03:07.440 --> 00:03:09.520 What I was thinking to do with my image 00:03:09.520 --> 00:03:16.235 was to reclaim the image of  blackness as an emblem of power. 00:03:17.382 --> 00:03:21.752 And I think it still functions  pretty much that same way. 00:03:29.760 --> 00:03:44.360 (somber organ music) 00:03:44.360 --> 00:03:45.520 I do a lot of different things, 00:03:45.520 --> 00:03:47.680 but I don't find any of them incompatible, 00:03:47.680 --> 00:03:50.000 because they all sort of reinforce each other. 00:03:52.925 --> 00:03:56.912 It's like whether I'm using  film, video, or anything else, 00:03:57.240 --> 00:03:59.480 either I'm working with a set of conventions 00:03:59.480 --> 00:04:00.760 that have already been established, 00:04:00.760 --> 00:04:02.600 or I'm working against a set of conventions 00:04:02.600 --> 00:04:03.720 that have already been established, 00:04:03.720 --> 00:04:05.440 but the primary source 00:04:05.440 --> 00:04:07.840 of my ideas about visual representation 00:04:07.840 --> 00:04:10.843 come from pictorial  representation through painting. 00:04:11.880 --> 00:04:13.595 This light is actually going to sit 00:04:15.360 --> 00:04:18.298 near here with a big sun on it. 00:04:18.960 --> 00:04:22.692 (light switch clicks) So it's gonna have its own light source. 00:04:24.920 --> 00:04:26.301 Hi, can you give me a hand? 00:04:26.960 --> 00:04:28.840 Because I want to push this back. 00:04:28.840 --> 00:04:30.880 These houses actually are  part of a project I'm doing 00:04:30.880 --> 00:04:32.600 for a show at the Columbus Museum, 00:04:32.600 --> 00:04:34.309 entitled "Illusions of Eden." 00:04:35.280 --> 00:04:38.312 The theme I've chosen to work  with is the theme of home, 00:04:39.040 --> 00:04:41.134 and essentially staged it. 00:04:41.640 --> 00:04:43.720 What I'm looking at, in a way, 00:04:43.720 --> 00:04:48.080 is how impenetrable those places are 00:04:48.080 --> 00:04:51.902 to people who are not on the inside. 00:04:52.520 --> 00:04:57.720 The whole idea of us really being 00:04:57.720 --> 00:05:00.000 in some ways obsessed at this point 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:01.800 with penetrating that wall, 00:05:03.080 --> 00:05:05.760 finding out what other people are doing, 00:05:05.760 --> 00:05:06.920 what's going on in their lives, 00:05:06.920 --> 00:05:08.640 what's going on in their houses. 00:05:08.640 --> 00:05:10.520 And is what's going on in their houses 00:05:10.520 --> 00:05:13.144 what we expect to be there? 00:05:19.521 --> 00:05:28.107 (train rattling) 00:05:38.520 --> 00:05:41.555 This is, it's live, all the way live. 00:05:41.644 --> 00:05:42.843 <v Guest>It is.</v> (overlapping chatter) 00:05:42.843 --> 00:05:43.440 <v ->This is the Bruce household.</v> 00:05:43.440 --> 00:05:47.154 <v Guest>Oh, yeah.</v> (overlapping chatter) 00:05:47.154 --> 00:05:50.352 <v ->Oh!</v> (guests laughing) 00:05:50.352 --> 00:05:52.464 <v Kerry>Somebody's got to  take up for your mother. 00:05:52.464 --> 00:05:53.760 <v ->Yes.</v> There we go. 00:05:53.760 --> 00:05:55.280 But I didn't know it at first. 00:05:55.280 --> 00:05:57.460 <v Guest>Now, Kerry, I don't have them.</v> 00:05:57.460 --> 00:05:58.077 <v Guest>Go ahead. Go on.</v> 00:05:58.077 --> 00:05:59.640 <v Kerry>That's a favorite.</v> 00:05:59.640 --> 00:06:01.122 (Kerry laughing) 00:06:01.243 --> 00:06:07.441 <v ->This was for my 74th birthday from Kerry,</v> 00:06:07.441 --> 00:06:12.111 and it says, "What did you  get Super T for her birthday?" 00:06:12.111 --> 00:06:15.080 You see how super I am? 00:06:15.080 --> 00:06:16.920 Super T! 00:06:16.920 --> 00:06:18.840 It says, "Lots of love." 00:06:18.840 --> 00:06:21.240 "Lots of love," and I like that. 00:06:21.240 --> 00:06:24.120 <v ->The defining experience I had</v> 00:06:24.120 --> 00:06:25.920 that made me understand 00:06:25.920 --> 00:06:28.040 that being an artist was what I wanted to be 00:06:28.680 --> 00:06:31.280 was that my kindergarten teacher 00:06:31.280 --> 00:06:35.320 kept a scrapbook of old photographs 00:06:35.320 --> 00:06:36.760 she had clipped out of magazines, 00:06:36.760 --> 00:06:40.440 Christmas cards, Valentines cards, you know, 00:06:41.240 --> 00:06:43.440 all manner of greeting cards, advertisements, 00:06:43.440 --> 00:06:46.120 and things like that, and she kept that scrapbook, 00:06:46.120 --> 00:06:48.480 and it was something that she only made available 00:06:48.480 --> 00:06:51.169 to the kid who was best behaved that day. 00:06:52.360 --> 00:06:53.800 And if you were really well-behaved, 00:06:53.800 --> 00:06:55.280 you got to look at that scrapbook 00:06:55.280 --> 00:06:57.798 while everybody else took their nap after recess. 00:06:58.680 --> 00:07:00.080 And it really was that book. 00:07:00.080 --> 00:07:02.400 It's like the day I got a  chance to look at that book, 00:07:02.400 --> 00:07:03.840 it really changed my life, 00:07:03.840 --> 00:07:05.440 because I sat there looking at the book. 00:07:05.440 --> 00:07:08.280 I mean, with tears in my eyes, 00:07:08.280 --> 00:07:10.520 I mean, literally with tears in my eyes, 00:07:10.520 --> 00:07:13.600 thinking that, "Wow, this is just so amazing, 00:07:13.600 --> 00:07:15.080 and that's what I want to do. 00:07:15.080 --> 00:07:16.720 I want to make pictures like these. 00:07:16.720 --> 00:07:18.920 I want to make pictures that affect other people 00:07:18.920 --> 00:07:20.800 the way these pictures are affecting me." 00:07:20.800 --> 00:07:22.960 <v ->I don't have a date on this card,</v> 00:07:22.960 --> 00:07:26.513 but it's an early collage, just says "beautiful," 00:07:27.440 --> 00:07:29.520 and it has a black figure. 00:07:31.560 --> 00:07:33.920 And I remember asking Kerry 00:07:33.920 --> 00:07:35.880 did he mean to have that spot there. 00:07:35.880 --> 00:07:37.200 But he did. 00:07:37.200 --> 00:07:38.560 (all laughing) 00:07:38.560 --> 00:07:43.000 And so that's how I began to understand 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:45.101 the many complexities. 00:07:59.440 --> 00:08:02.400 <v ->When I was in junior high school,</v> 00:08:02.400 --> 00:08:06.080 I got a summer scholarship to take a drawing class 00:08:06.080 --> 00:08:07.594 at the Otis Art Institute. 00:08:09.160 --> 00:08:11.800 The drawing teacher had a book 00:08:11.800 --> 00:08:13.880 that he put on the opaque projector. 00:08:13.880 --> 00:08:16.379 It was "Images of Dignity: The  Drawings of Charles White." 00:08:18.320 --> 00:08:19.840 and he showed us those drawings, 00:08:19.840 --> 00:08:23.080 and I had never seen anything like it before, 00:08:23.080 --> 00:08:25.800 because prior to that, almost all of the artists 00:08:25.800 --> 00:08:28.720 I had encountered in art  history books were European. 00:08:28.720 --> 00:08:31.909 I thought, "Wow, this is just amazing." 00:08:32.880 --> 00:08:33.640 He says, "Well, you know, 00:08:33.640 --> 00:08:37.160 Charles White's got a studio upstairs." 00:08:37.160 --> 00:08:39.800 And he said it was okay for  us to go into the studio 00:08:39.800 --> 00:08:41.867 and see some work in progress. 00:08:43.102 --> 00:08:45.000 You got to see the process. 00:08:45.840 --> 00:08:48.800 You got to see how ugly a drawing can look 00:08:48.800 --> 00:08:50.160 before it was brought to this point 00:08:50.160 --> 00:08:52.132 of refinement and finish. 00:08:53.720 --> 00:08:55.680 That was what was really interesting to me. 00:08:55.680 --> 00:08:59.440 I mean, seeing these stages. 00:09:05.141 --> 00:09:07.585 And then, yeah, that's... 00:09:07.585 --> 00:09:09.145 (both laughing) Let's see what happens. 00:09:09.145 --> 00:09:12.692 <v Student>Are you sure?</v> Well, you got nothing to lose. 00:09:12.692 --> 00:09:14.560 <v Artist>The initial images,  the underlaying images 00:09:14.560 --> 00:09:18.440 all come from photographs of my family in Cuba. 00:09:19.160 --> 00:09:25.060 They start at about '38 and  go right up to the revolution. 00:09:25.060 --> 00:09:27.400 <v Kerry>How do you intend now to incorporate</v> 00:09:27.400 --> 00:09:28.480 the present moment? 00:09:28.480 --> 00:09:29.360 Is that important at all? 00:09:29.360 --> 00:09:30.727 <v ->That's a good question.</v> 00:09:31.720 --> 00:09:32.680 Probably a dumb thing to say, 00:09:32.680 --> 00:09:35.000 but I hadn't really thought  that all the way through yet. 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:36.600 <v ->That's not a dumb thing to say,</v> 00:09:36.600 --> 00:09:37.880 but it's just the kinds of questions 00:09:37.880 --> 00:09:40.040 I would be interested in asking 00:09:40.040 --> 00:09:43.440 and hearing some reflection on. 00:09:48.920 --> 00:09:50.960 Part of what I'm always interested in seeing 00:09:50.960 --> 00:09:52.200 when I come to the museum 00:09:52.200 --> 00:09:56.160 is not really how refined or  how finished a work can be, 00:09:56.160 --> 00:09:57.820 but I'm really interested in showing, 00:09:58.680 --> 00:10:00.000 especially to my students, 00:10:00.880 --> 00:10:03.040 evidence of the artists' thinking 00:10:03.040 --> 00:10:05.470 and evidence of the artists' process. 00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:11.400 Some of what's evident in a painting like this, 00:10:11.400 --> 00:10:13.640 an unfinished painting, is that it always, 00:10:13.640 --> 00:10:18.699 it reminds me of just how  difficult making a painting is. 00:10:23.200 --> 00:10:26.920 It confirms the suspicion that I always had 00:10:26.920 --> 00:10:29.320 that these things don't come  into existence by magic. 00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:39.400 I'm gonna take this out, partly because, 00:10:39.400 --> 00:10:42.080 when you're thinking about the  way to organize the painting, 00:10:42.080 --> 00:10:43.520 there's some structural considerations 00:10:43.520 --> 00:10:45.880 you have to keep in mind. 00:10:45.880 --> 00:10:48.291 This is definitely the kinds  of images you're working with. 00:10:49.173 --> 00:10:51.729 They will actually tell you  how to make your painting. 00:10:54.840 --> 00:10:58.880 This is essentially how I work on my stuff. 00:10:58.880 --> 00:11:00.960 I'm always referring to some other source 00:11:00.960 --> 00:11:04.000 to give me some clues to how things in my own work 00:11:04.000 --> 00:11:07.201 can be organized better. 00:11:26.320 --> 00:11:29.680 Well, what I'm doing right now is actually 00:11:29.680 --> 00:11:34.160 I'm actually doing a comic strip in newspaper form 00:11:34.160 --> 00:11:36.680 that I could use for a particular installation 00:11:36.680 --> 00:11:37.634 at the Carnegie. 00:11:40.480 --> 00:11:45.520 What I hit on as a subject was this idea 00:11:45.520 --> 00:11:47.840 that when you go to the  museums to see African art, 00:11:47.840 --> 00:11:50.240 those symbolic representations 00:11:50.240 --> 00:11:52.640 of the heroes seem pretty inert. 00:11:52.640 --> 00:11:55.000 The tradition from which they come 00:11:55.000 --> 00:11:57.840 doesn't have the same kind of currency 00:11:57.840 --> 00:12:03.360 that the tradition of Greek  mythological heroes has, 00:12:03.360 --> 00:12:06.774 although there are parallels  between those two traditions. 00:12:08.760 --> 00:12:10.280 And so I thought what I would do 00:12:10.280 --> 00:12:13.320 would be to take those African sculptures 00:12:13.320 --> 00:12:16.000 and re-animate them, in a sense, 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:18.168 And make them into the super heroes 00:12:19.448 --> 00:12:21.660 to become like a new Luke Skywalker 00:12:21.660 --> 00:12:26.098 or a new Darth Vader or a  new Batman or a new Superman. 00:12:27.400 --> 00:12:30.880 Now, when I was growing up reading Marvel comics, 00:12:32.520 --> 00:12:35.720 the X-Men, the mighty Hulk, Spider-Man, 00:12:35.720 --> 00:12:39.080 all of those characters were  amazing characters to me. 00:12:39.080 --> 00:12:40.400 And so what I'm actually doing 00:12:40.400 --> 00:12:43.247 is kind of reverting back  to my childhood, I guess. 00:12:48.520 --> 00:12:51.040 I thought what I would do with this project 00:12:51.040 --> 00:12:53.450 was to take a form that's in some ways 00:12:53.450 --> 00:12:55.951 already undervalued in America, 00:12:57.120 --> 00:12:59.856 take a subject that's under-represented 00:13:01.040 --> 00:13:02.360 and try to find a way in which 00:13:02.360 --> 00:13:04.720 we can carry these traditions into the future 00:13:04.720 --> 00:13:08.882 so that they don't have to just dissipate and die.