Julie Mehretu: Politicized Landscapes | Art21 "Extended Play"

[Julie Mehretu: Politicized Landscapes]

There is no such thing as just "landscape".

The actual landscape is politicized through

the events that take place on it.

And I don't think it's possible for me,
in general,

to ever think about the American landscape

without thinking about the colonial history--

and the colonial violence--
of that narrative.

The abolitionist movement.

The Civil War.

The move towards emancipation.

All of these social dynamics that are
part of that narrative,

we don't really talk about in regards to
American landscape paintings.

And so, what does it mean to paint a landscape

and try and be an artist
in this political moment?

The color in these paintings
really came out of

blurred photographs that were
embedded inside of the underpaintings.

The sirens and the flames of race riots

was a way to embed the paintings with DNA

so that I could respond from a deeper place.

--I'm going to go upstairs and take a look.

--Yeah, I'm excited!

[LAUGHS]

Marian Goodman contacted me,

telling me that SFMOMA was interested
in doing this commission

before the new museum opened.

I went several times to San Francisco
to visit the museum.

I was there, staring at this
very cavernous, open space--

at these two walls.

And I started to think about
the national parks

and the representations of
American landscape painting.

And, specifically, when I came back,

I kept thinking about the
Hudson River Valley School painters,

like Edwin Church,

Thomas Cole,
Bierstadt--

because they really encapsulate that idea
of going westward.

I started to layer the blurred color images
into these historic landscape paintings.

Just prior to emancipation,

Native Americans of the Sierras
and the western frontiers were

completely annihilated by this
expansionist project.

What was interesting was that aspect of

both annihilation and then
preservation shortly after

can exist on the same geographic landscape.

San Francisco then, as a site,

became important because that was
this destiny of going out west.

[Jason Moran, composer and pianist]

--[MEHRETU] How are you doing?

Jason Moran wrote me after seeing some paintings

and he talked about them as a score.

And I was super interested in that.

And so we started working together here

in a very, very loose and open way.

It's kind of an amazing thing to paint
in a church.

Everything kind of reverberates
back into here,

energy-wise--
consciousness-wise--

and everything that has taken place
this year in my personal life,

with my children,
with what has happened politically.

All of that is immersed in these paintings.

[Electric piano plays]

All of these brutal killings of Black people
in this country--

and the Black body.

The Trump-Hillary dynamic,

it was disgusting to witness.

There was something in that language
that's visceral.

When a person speaks so horrifically towards
another being,

that's deeply wrenching.

The discomfort of being a person
living and working in the United States

is a place that, I think, these paintings
were being made from.

[Electric piano plays]

[JASON MORAN] Every room defines one tone,

and it's like the room tone.

It's the tone that makes it resonate.

And I started to find some of that
in the note A-flat.

I started to build around that,

and then, every once in a while,

look up and see where Julie was in her work.

Then slowly, I started to look at
my sheet of paper

not as a place that had a start and a finish,

but that all of it could be composed on
different moments.

--I made a little section where
you were taking stuff away.

[LAUGHS]

--I made you a little part that's like,
"I'm taking this away."

[MEHRETU LAUGHS]

[MORAN] America is a country still in the
adolescent stage.

It doesn't know how to deal with its emotions.

[LAUGHS]

It doesn't know how to deal with its history.

It doesn't want to dig in the ground to know
what artifacts are under it.

And so, jazz, I always say,
has been that form of music

that's been the model of letting people
know what's happening.

It's always been like that.

[Electric piano plays]

And so we recorded the music because

we should document the moment

and also share the moment, too.

[MEHRETU] I really try to think about
painting in terms of

the construction or making of an image.

Dealing with things that
we don't have proper language for.

I kind of start to think of them as
these visual neologisms.

The neologism is there to address
when language isn't enough.

Through repetition of the mark,

there's this desire of trying
to invent something.

At a certain point, I wanted to bring
elements of the underpainting to the surface,

so that it further complicated, spatially,
how you were seeing these.

When you're looking at these paintings,
they're not graspable.

There are moments where they reference
Renaissance Ascension painting,

and then other moments that feel digitized.

At least for me,
they're not something I feel like

I can give any kind of articulation
of what's happening fully.

[Jazz music plays]

I love California.

There's this grandeur to the coast
and the way the coast reaches the ocean.

When you're driving through the Bay Area,
it's just majestic.

[San Francisco Museum of Modern Art]

I feel like I have a hundred other paintings
I want to make,

because I've learned so much in making these.

I'm not going to try and take a break
or stop working.

There's a lot of creative momentum
in finishing these paintings.

[Clapping and cheering]

I have a lot of ideas that I want to investigate

and I'm excited about that.