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Julie Mehretu: Politicized Landscapes | Art21 "Extended Play"

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    [Julie Mehretu: Politicized Landscapes]
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    There is no such thing as just "landscape".
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    The actual landscape is politicized through
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    the events that take place on it.
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    And I don't think it's possible for me,
    in general,
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    to ever think about the American landscape
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    without thinking about the colonial history--
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    and the colonial violence--
    of that narrative.
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    The abolitionist movement.
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    The Civil War.
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    The move towards emancipation.
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    All of these social dynamics that are
    part of that narrative,
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    we don't really talk about in regards to
    American landscape paintings.
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    And so, what does it mean to paint a landscape
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    and try and be an artist
    in this political moment?
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    The color in these paintings
    really came out of
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    blurred photographs that were
    embedded inside of the underpaintings.
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    The sirens and the flames of race riots
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    was a way to embed the paintings with DNA
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    so that I could respond from a deeper place.
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    --I'm going to go upstairs and take a look.
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    --Yeah, I'm excited!
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    [LAUGHS]
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    Marian Goodman contacted me,
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    telling me that SFMOMA was interested
    in doing this commission
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    before the new museum opened.
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    I went several times to San Francisco
    to visit the museum.
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    I was there, staring at this
    very cavernous, open space--
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    at these two walls.
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    And I started to think about
    the national parks
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    and the representations of
    American landscape painting.
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    And, specifically, when I came back,
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    I kept thinking about the
    Hudson River Valley School painters,
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    like Edwin Church,
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    Thomas Cole,
    Bierstadt--
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    because they really encapsulate that idea
    of going westward.
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    I started to layer the blurred color images
    into these historic landscape paintings.
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    Just prior to emancipation,
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    Native Americans of the Sierras
    and the western frontiers were
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    completely annihilated by this
    expansionist project.
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    What was interesting was that aspect of
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    both annihilation and then
    preservation shortly after
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    can exist on the same geographic landscape.
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    San Francisco then, as a site,
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    became important because that was
    this destiny of going out west.
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    [Jason Moran, composer and pianist]
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    --[MEHRETU] How are you doing?
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    Jason Moran wrote me after seeing some paintings
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    and he talked about them as a score.
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    And I was super interested in that.
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    And so we started working together here
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    in a very, very loose and open way.
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    It's kind of an amazing thing to paint
    in a church.
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    Everything kind of reverberates
    back into here,
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    energy-wise--
    consciousness-wise--
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    and everything that has taken place
    this year in my personal life,
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    with my children,
    with what has happened politically.
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    All of that is immersed in these paintings.
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    [Electric piano plays]
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    All of these brutal killings of Black people
    in this country--
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    and the Black body.
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    The Trump-Hillary dynamic,
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    it was disgusting to witness.
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    There was something in that language
    that's visceral.
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    When a person speaks so horrifically towards
    another being,
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    that's deeply wrenching.
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    The discomfort of being a person
    living and working in the United States
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    is a place that, I think, these paintings
    were being made from.
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    [Electric piano plays]
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    [JASON MORAN] Every room defines one tone,
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    and it's like the room tone.
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    It's the tone that makes it resonate.
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    And I started to find some of that
    in the note A-flat.
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    I started to build around that,
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    and then, every once in a while,
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    look up and see where Julie was in her work.
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    Then slowly, I started to look at
    my sheet of paper
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    not as a place that had a start and a finish,
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    but that all of it could be composed on
    different moments.
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    --I made a little section where
    you were taking stuff away.
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    [LAUGHS]
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    --I made you a little part that's like,
    "I'm taking this away."
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    [MEHRETU LAUGHS]
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    [MORAN] America is a country still in the
    adolescent stage.
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    It doesn't know how to deal with its emotions.
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    [LAUGHS]
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    It doesn't know how to deal with its history.
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    It doesn't want to dig in the ground to know
    what artifacts are under it.
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    And so, jazz, I always say,
    has been that form of music
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    that's been the model of letting people
    know what's happening.
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    It's always been like that.
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    [Electric piano plays]
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    And so we recorded the music because
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    we should document the moment
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    and also share the moment, too.
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    [MEHRETU] I really try to think about
    painting in terms of
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    the construction or making of an image.
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    Dealing with things that
    we don't have proper language for.
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    I kind of start to think of them as
    these visual neologisms.
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    The neologism is there to address
    when language isn't enough.
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    Through repetition of the mark,
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    there's this desire of trying
    to invent something.
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    At a certain point, I wanted to bring
    elements of the underpainting to the surface,
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    so that it further complicated, spatially,
    how you were seeing these.
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    When you're looking at these paintings,
    they're not graspable.
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    There are moments where they reference
    Renaissance Ascension painting,
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    and then other moments that feel digitized.
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    At least for me,
    they're not something I feel like
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    I can give any kind of articulation
    of what's happening fully.
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    [Jazz music plays]
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    I love California.
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    There's this grandeur to the coast
    and the way the coast reaches the ocean.
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    When you're driving through the Bay Area,
    it's just majestic.
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    [San Francisco Museum of Modern Art]
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    I feel like I have a hundred other paintings
    I want to make,
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    because I've learned so much in making these.
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    I'm not going to try and take a break
    or stop working.
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    There's a lot of creative momentum
    in finishing these paintings.
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    [Clapping and cheering]
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    I have a lot of ideas that I want to investigate
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    and I'm excited about that.
Title:
Julie Mehretu: Politicized Landscapes | Art21 "Extended Play"
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
Art21
Project:
"Extended Play" series
Duration:
09:55

English subtitles

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