1 00:00:13,860 --> 00:00:19,660 [Julie Mehretu: Politicized Landscapes] 2 00:00:20,040 --> 00:00:22,960 There is no such thing as just "landscape". 3 00:00:26,740 --> 00:00:29,520 The actual landscape is politicized through 4 00:00:29,520 --> 00:00:31,480 the events that take place on it. 5 00:00:32,660 --> 00:00:35,900 And I don't think it's possible for me, in general, 6 00:00:35,900 --> 00:00:38,620 to ever think about the American landscape 7 00:00:38,620 --> 00:00:41,370 without thinking about the colonial history-- 8 00:00:41,370 --> 00:00:44,040 and the colonial violence-- of that narrative. 9 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:51,300 The abolitionist movement. 10 00:00:51,860 --> 00:00:52,700 The Civil War. 11 00:00:53,440 --> 00:00:55,080 The move towards emancipation. 12 00:00:56,900 --> 00:01:00,320 All of these social dynamics that are part of that narrative, 13 00:01:00,320 --> 00:01:04,340 we don't really talk about in regards to American landscape paintings. 14 00:01:05,440 --> 00:01:08,240 And so, what does it mean to paint a landscape 15 00:01:08,240 --> 00:01:11,300 and try and be an artist in this political moment? 16 00:01:16,840 --> 00:01:19,560 The color in these paintings really came out of 17 00:01:19,560 --> 00:01:23,520 blurred photographs that were embedded inside of the underpaintings. 18 00:01:24,580 --> 00:01:28,020 The sirens and the flames of race riots 19 00:01:28,020 --> 00:01:31,420 was a way to embed the paintings with DNA 20 00:01:31,420 --> 00:01:34,020 so that I could respond from a deeper place. 21 00:01:37,640 --> 00:01:39,840 --I'm going to go upstairs and take a look. 22 00:01:44,660 --> 00:01:46,160 --Yeah, I'm excited! 23 00:01:46,160 --> 00:01:47,460 [LAUGHS] 24 00:01:57,340 --> 00:01:59,460 Marian Goodman contacted me, 25 00:01:59,469 --> 00:02:02,810 telling me that SFMOMA was interested in doing this commission 26 00:02:02,810 --> 00:02:04,580 before the new museum opened. 27 00:02:06,800 --> 00:02:11,040 I went several times to San Francisco to visit the museum. 28 00:02:11,640 --> 00:02:15,480 I was there, staring at this very cavernous, open space-- 29 00:02:15,480 --> 00:02:16,860 at these two walls. 30 00:02:16,860 --> 00:02:19,959 And I started to think about the national parks 31 00:02:19,959 --> 00:02:22,570 and the representations of American landscape painting. 32 00:02:22,570 --> 00:02:24,920 And, specifically, when I came back, 33 00:02:24,920 --> 00:02:27,810 I kept thinking about the Hudson River Valley School painters, 34 00:02:27,810 --> 00:02:29,550 like Edwin Church, 35 00:02:29,550 --> 00:02:31,840 Thomas Cole, Bierstadt-- 36 00:02:31,840 --> 00:02:36,000 because they really encapsulate that idea of going westward. 37 00:02:37,280 --> 00:02:43,460 I started to layer the blurred color images into these historic landscape paintings. 38 00:02:47,400 --> 00:02:49,720 Just prior to emancipation, 39 00:02:49,720 --> 00:02:53,440 Native Americans of the Sierras and the western frontiers were 40 00:02:53,440 --> 00:02:56,920 completely annihilated by this expansionist project. 41 00:02:58,380 --> 00:03:00,900 What was interesting was that aspect of 42 00:03:00,909 --> 00:03:03,989 both annihilation and then preservation shortly after 43 00:03:03,989 --> 00:03:06,580 can exist on the same geographic landscape. 44 00:03:09,780 --> 00:03:12,330 San Francisco then, as a site, 45 00:03:12,330 --> 00:03:17,760 became important because that was this destiny of going out west. 46 00:03:25,020 --> 00:03:28,260 [Jason Moran, composer and pianist] 47 00:03:28,700 --> 00:03:29,900 --[MEHRETU] How are you doing? 48 00:03:30,440 --> 00:03:32,820 Jason Moran wrote me after seeing some paintings 49 00:03:32,820 --> 00:03:35,420 and he talked about them as a score. 50 00:03:36,520 --> 00:03:38,400 And I was super interested in that. 51 00:03:41,760 --> 00:03:45,319 And so we started working together here 52 00:03:45,320 --> 00:03:48,240 in a very, very loose and open way. 53 00:03:52,240 --> 00:03:55,040 It's kind of an amazing thing to paint in a church. 54 00:03:56,720 --> 00:03:59,640 Everything kind of reverberates back into here, 55 00:03:59,650 --> 00:04:02,680 energy-wise-- consciousness-wise-- 56 00:04:02,680 --> 00:04:06,129 and everything that has taken place this year in my personal life, 57 00:04:06,129 --> 00:04:09,120 with my children, with what has happened politically. 58 00:04:10,080 --> 00:04:13,000 All of that is immersed in these paintings. 59 00:04:13,620 --> 00:04:16,740 [Electric piano plays] 60 00:04:28,200 --> 00:04:31,040 All of these brutal killings of Black people in this country-- 61 00:04:31,040 --> 00:04:32,640 and the Black body. 62 00:04:34,820 --> 00:04:36,520 The Trump-Hillary dynamic, 63 00:04:38,020 --> 00:04:39,700 it was disgusting to witness. 64 00:04:41,140 --> 00:04:44,540 There was something in that language that's visceral. 65 00:04:46,140 --> 00:04:49,780 When a person speaks so horrifically towards another being, 66 00:04:50,460 --> 00:04:52,420 that's deeply wrenching. 67 00:04:55,400 --> 00:04:59,640 The discomfort of being a person living and working in the United States 68 00:04:59,640 --> 00:05:03,080 is a place that, I think, these paintings were being made from. 69 00:05:03,820 --> 00:05:08,000 [Electric piano plays] 70 00:05:26,480 --> 00:05:28,960 [JASON MORAN] Every room defines one tone, 71 00:05:28,960 --> 00:05:30,980 and it's like the room tone. 72 00:05:32,560 --> 00:05:34,960 It's the tone that makes it resonate. 73 00:05:36,260 --> 00:05:39,040 And I started to find some of that in the note A-flat. 74 00:05:45,120 --> 00:05:47,200 I started to build around that, 75 00:05:47,200 --> 00:05:49,060 and then, every once in a while, 76 00:05:49,060 --> 00:05:51,640 look up and see where Julie was in her work. 77 00:05:53,500 --> 00:05:56,460 Then slowly, I started to look at my sheet of paper 78 00:05:56,460 --> 00:05:59,220 not as a place that had a start and a finish, 79 00:05:59,220 --> 00:06:02,640 but that all of it could be composed on different moments. 80 00:06:06,540 --> 00:06:10,480 --I made a little section where you were taking stuff away. 81 00:06:10,490 --> 00:06:11,490 [LAUGHS] 82 00:06:11,490 --> 00:06:16,420 --I made you a little part that's like, "I'm taking this away." 83 00:06:17,600 --> 00:06:18,500 [MEHRETU LAUGHS] 84 00:06:18,500 --> 00:06:22,420 [MORAN] America is a country still in the adolescent stage. 85 00:06:22,430 --> 00:06:24,230 It doesn't know how to deal with its emotions. 86 00:06:24,230 --> 00:06:25,230 [LAUGHS] 87 00:06:25,230 --> 00:06:26,820 It doesn't know how to deal with its history. 88 00:06:26,820 --> 00:06:30,580 It doesn't want to dig in the ground to know what artifacts are under it. 89 00:06:30,590 --> 00:06:34,590 And so, jazz, I always say, has been that form of music 90 00:06:34,590 --> 00:06:37,520 that's been the model of letting people know what's happening. 91 00:06:39,100 --> 00:06:40,600 It's always been like that. 92 00:06:40,720 --> 00:06:42,620 [Electric piano plays] 93 00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:47,560 And so we recorded the music because 94 00:06:47,570 --> 00:06:49,190 we should document the moment 95 00:06:49,190 --> 00:06:51,400 and also share the moment, too. 96 00:06:56,400 --> 00:06:59,580 [MEHRETU] I really try to think about painting in terms of 97 00:06:59,580 --> 00:07:01,980 the construction or making of an image. 98 00:07:02,360 --> 00:07:05,280 Dealing with things that we don't have proper language for. 99 00:07:06,280 --> 00:07:09,920 I kind of start to think of them as these visual neologisms. 100 00:07:11,620 --> 00:07:14,960 The neologism is there to address when language isn't enough. 101 00:07:19,100 --> 00:07:20,520 Through repetition of the mark, 102 00:07:20,520 --> 00:07:23,340 there's this desire of trying to invent something. 103 00:07:37,720 --> 00:07:41,580 At a certain point, I wanted to bring elements of the underpainting to the surface, 104 00:07:41,580 --> 00:07:45,600 so that it further complicated, spatially, how you were seeing these. 105 00:07:50,680 --> 00:07:54,300 When you're looking at these paintings, they're not graspable. 106 00:07:56,200 --> 00:08:00,060 There are moments where they reference Renaissance Ascension painting, 107 00:08:00,060 --> 00:08:02,580 and then other moments that feel digitized. 108 00:08:03,920 --> 00:08:06,120 At least for me, they're not something I feel like 109 00:08:06,120 --> 00:08:09,440 I can give any kind of articulation of what's happening fully. 110 00:08:12,980 --> 00:08:16,440 [Jazz music plays] 111 00:08:23,360 --> 00:08:25,100 I love California. 112 00:08:27,120 --> 00:08:32,280 There's this grandeur to the coast and the way the coast reaches the ocean. 113 00:08:32,280 --> 00:08:35,860 When you're driving through the Bay Area, it's just majestic. 114 00:08:36,920 --> 00:08:40,260 [San Francisco Museum of Modern Art] 115 00:08:53,860 --> 00:08:56,320 I feel like I have a hundred other paintings I want to make, 116 00:08:56,320 --> 00:08:59,540 because I've learned so much in making these. 117 00:09:04,500 --> 00:09:08,460 I'm not going to try and take a break or stop working. 118 00:09:08,460 --> 00:09:12,600 There's a lot of creative momentum in finishing these paintings. 119 00:09:21,020 --> 00:09:24,580 [Clapping and cheering] 120 00:09:28,460 --> 00:09:31,180 I have a lot of ideas that I want to investigate 121 00:09:31,180 --> 00:09:32,900 and I'm excited about that.