WEBVTT 00:00:13.860 --> 00:00:19.660 [Julie Mehretu: Politicized Landscapes] 00:00:20.040 --> 00:00:22.960 There is no such thing as just "landscape". 00:00:26.740 --> 00:00:29.520 The actual landscape is politicized through 00:00:29.520 --> 00:00:31.480 the events that take place on it. 00:00:32.660 --> 00:00:35.900 And I don't think it's possible for me, in general, 00:00:35.900 --> 00:00:38.620 to ever think about the American landscape 00:00:38.620 --> 00:00:41.370 without thinking about the colonial history-- 00:00:41.370 --> 00:00:44.040 and the colonial violence-- of that narrative. 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:51.300 The abolitionist movement. 00:00:51.860 --> 00:00:52.700 The Civil War. 00:00:53.440 --> 00:00:55.080 The move towards emancipation. 00:00:56.900 --> 00:01:00.320 All of these social dynamics that are part of that narrative, 00:01:00.320 --> 00:01:04.340 we don't really talk about in regards to American landscape paintings. 00:01:05.440 --> 00:01:08.240 And so, what does it mean to paint a landscape 00:01:08.240 --> 00:01:11.300 and try and be an artist in this political moment? 00:01:16.840 --> 00:01:19.560 The color in these paintings really came out of 00:01:19.560 --> 00:01:23.520 blurred photographs that were embedded inside of the underpaintings. 00:01:24.580 --> 00:01:28.020 The sirens and the flames of race riots 00:01:28.020 --> 00:01:31.420 was a way to embed the paintings with DNA 00:01:31.420 --> 00:01:34.020 so that I could respond from a deeper place. 00:01:37.640 --> 00:01:39.840 --I'm going to go upstairs and take a look. 00:01:44.660 --> 00:01:46.160 --Yeah, I'm excited! 00:01:46.160 --> 00:01:47.460 [LAUGHS] 00:01:57.340 --> 00:01:59.460 Marian Goodman contacted me, 00:01:59.469 --> 00:02:02.810 telling me that SFMOMA was interested in doing this commission 00:02:02.810 --> 00:02:04.580 before the new museum opened. 00:02:06.800 --> 00:02:11.040 I went several times to San Francisco to visit the museum. 00:02:11.640 --> 00:02:15.480 I was there, staring at this very cavernous, open space-- 00:02:15.480 --> 00:02:16.860 at these two walls. 00:02:16.860 --> 00:02:19.959 And I started to think about the national parks 00:02:19.959 --> 00:02:22.570 and the representations of American landscape painting. 00:02:22.570 --> 00:02:24.920 And, specifically, when I came back, 00:02:24.920 --> 00:02:27.810 I kept thinking about the Hudson River Valley School painters, 00:02:27.810 --> 00:02:29.550 like Edwin Church, 00:02:29.550 --> 00:02:31.840 Thomas Cole, Bierstadt-- 00:02:31.840 --> 00:02:36.000 because they really encapsulate that idea of going westward. 00:02:37.280 --> 00:02:43.460 I started to layer the blurred color images into these historic landscape paintings. 00:02:47.400 --> 00:02:49.720 Just prior to emancipation, 00:02:49.720 --> 00:02:53.440 Native Americans of the Sierras and the western frontiers were 00:02:53.440 --> 00:02:56.920 completely annihilated by this expansionist project. 00:02:58.380 --> 00:03:00.900 What was interesting was that aspect of 00:03:00.909 --> 00:03:03.989 both annihilation and then preservation shortly after 00:03:03.989 --> 00:03:06.580 can exist on the same geographic landscape. 00:03:09.780 --> 00:03:12.330 San Francisco then, as a site, 00:03:12.330 --> 00:03:17.760 became important because that was this destiny of going out west. 00:03:25.020 --> 00:03:28.260 [Jason Moran, composer and pianist] 00:03:28.700 --> 00:03:29.900 --[MEHRETU] How are you doing? 00:03:30.440 --> 00:03:32.820 Jason Moran wrote me after seeing some paintings 00:03:32.820 --> 00:03:35.420 and he talked about them as a score. 00:03:36.520 --> 00:03:38.400 And I was super interested in that. 00:03:41.760 --> 00:03:45.319 And so we started working together here 00:03:45.320 --> 00:03:48.240 in a very, very loose and open way. 00:03:52.240 --> 00:03:55.040 It's kind of an amazing thing to paint in a church. 00:03:56.720 --> 00:03:59.640 Everything kind of reverberates back into here, 00:03:59.650 --> 00:04:02.680 energy-wise-- consciousness-wise-- 00:04:02.680 --> 00:04:06.129 and everything that has taken place this year in my personal life, 00:04:06.129 --> 00:04:09.120 with my children, with what has happened politically. 00:04:10.080 --> 00:04:13.000 All of that is immersed in these paintings. 00:04:13.620 --> 00:04:16.740 [Electric piano plays] 00:04:28.200 --> 00:04:31.040 All of these brutal killings of Black people in this country-- 00:04:31.040 --> 00:04:32.640 and the Black body. 00:04:34.820 --> 00:04:36.520 The Trump-Hillary dynamic, 00:04:38.020 --> 00:04:39.700 it was disgusting to witness. 00:04:41.140 --> 00:04:44.540 There was something in that language that's visceral. 00:04:46.140 --> 00:04:49.780 When a person speaks so horrifically towards another being, 00:04:50.460 --> 00:04:52.420 that's deeply wrenching. 00:04:55.400 --> 00:04:59.640 The discomfort of being a person living and working in the United States 00:04:59.640 --> 00:05:03.080 is a place that, I think, these paintings were being made from. 00:05:03.820 --> 00:05:08.000 [Electric piano plays] 00:05:26.480 --> 00:05:28.960 [JASON MORAN] Every room defines one tone, 00:05:28.960 --> 00:05:30.980 and it's like the room tone. 00:05:32.560 --> 00:05:34.960 It's the tone that makes it resonate. 00:05:36.260 --> 00:05:39.040 And I started to find some of that in the note A-flat. 00:05:45.120 --> 00:05:47.200 I started to build around that, 00:05:47.200 --> 00:05:49.060 and then, every once in a while, 00:05:49.060 --> 00:05:51.640 look up and see where Julie was in her work. 00:05:53.500 --> 00:05:56.460 Then slowly, I started to look at my sheet of paper 00:05:56.460 --> 00:05:59.220 not as a place that had a start and a finish, 00:05:59.220 --> 00:06:02.640 but that all of it could be composed on different moments. 00:06:06.540 --> 00:06:10.480 --I made a little section where you were taking stuff away. 00:06:10.490 --> 00:06:11.490 [LAUGHS] 00:06:11.490 --> 00:06:16.420 --I made you a little part that's like, "I'm taking this away." 00:06:17.600 --> 00:06:18.500 [MEHRETU LAUGHS] 00:06:18.500 --> 00:06:22.420 [MORAN] America is a country still in the adolescent stage. 00:06:22.430 --> 00:06:24.230 It doesn't know how to deal with its emotions. 00:06:24.230 --> 00:06:25.230 [LAUGHS] 00:06:25.230 --> 00:06:26.820 It doesn't know how to deal with its history. 00:06:26.820 --> 00:06:30.580 It doesn't want to dig in the ground to know what artifacts are under it. 00:06:30.590 --> 00:06:34.590 And so, jazz, I always say, has been that form of music 00:06:34.590 --> 00:06:37.520 that's been the model of letting people know what's happening. 00:06:39.100 --> 00:06:40.600 It's always been like that. 00:06:40.720 --> 00:06:42.620 [Electric piano plays] 00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:47.560 And so we recorded the music because 00:06:47.570 --> 00:06:49.190 we should document the moment 00:06:49.190 --> 00:06:51.400 and also share the moment, too. 00:06:56.400 --> 00:06:59.580 [MEHRETU] I really try to think about painting in terms of 00:06:59.580 --> 00:07:01.980 the construction or making of an image. 00:07:02.360 --> 00:07:05.280 Dealing with things that we don't have proper language for. 00:07:06.280 --> 00:07:09.920 I kind of start to think of them as these visual neologisms. 00:07:11.620 --> 00:07:14.960 The neologism is there to address when language isn't enough. 00:07:19.100 --> 00:07:20.520 Through repetition of the mark, 00:07:20.520 --> 00:07:23.340 there's this desire of trying to invent something. 00:07:37.720 --> 00:07:41.580 At a certain point, I wanted to bring elements of the underpainting to the surface, 00:07:41.580 --> 00:07:45.600 so that it further complicated, spatially, how you were seeing these. 00:07:50.680 --> 00:07:54.300 When you're looking at these paintings, they're not graspable. 00:07:56.200 --> 00:08:00.060 There are moments where they reference Renaissance Ascension painting, 00:08:00.060 --> 00:08:02.580 and then other moments that feel digitized. 00:08:03.920 --> 00:08:06.120 At least for me, they're not something I feel like 00:08:06.120 --> 00:08:09.440 I can give any kind of articulation of what's happening fully. 00:08:12.980 --> 00:08:16.440 [Jazz music plays] 00:08:23.360 --> 00:08:25.100 I love California. 00:08:27.120 --> 00:08:32.280 There's this grandeur to the coast and the way the coast reaches the ocean. 00:08:32.280 --> 00:08:35.860 When you're driving through the Bay Area, it's just majestic. 00:08:36.920 --> 00:08:40.260 [San Francisco Museum of Modern Art] 00:08:53.860 --> 00:08:56.320 I feel like I have a hundred other paintings I want to make, 00:08:56.320 --> 00:08:59.540 because I've learned so much in making these. 00:09:04.500 --> 00:09:08.460 I'm not going to try and take a break or stop working. 00:09:08.460 --> 00:09:12.600 There's a lot of creative momentum in finishing these paintings. 00:09:21.020 --> 00:09:24.580 [Clapping and cheering] 00:09:28.460 --> 00:09:31.180 I have a lot of ideas that I want to investigate 00:09:31.180 --> 00:09:32.900 and I'm excited about that.