Mark Bradford, 150 Portrait Tone, 2017, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
MEETING AT LACMA:
We will meet at LACMA at the Wilshire Blvd. entrance next to the ticket office and Chris Burden's Urban Light sculpture (shown below) at 12:00PM on Saturday, November 12. LACMA will be providing us with free admission to the museum.
IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION: LACMA’s first priority is the health and safety of our visitors, staff, and volunteers. Masks continue to be required indoors for everyone, regardless of vaccination status, until further notice. Maintaining some health and safety protocols remains critical to provide a safe environment for staff, volunteers, and visitors of all ages, including those with compromised health and families with children who cannot be vaccinated. These protocols are in place to help protect against the spread of COVID-19. Please read all guidelines HERE before your visit. https://www.lacma.org/plan-your-visit
5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Phone: (323) 857-6010
Parking costs $20.00 per vehicle, and it is not part of our free admission.
We will be spending time looking at Mark Bradford's 150 Portrait Tone (Picture above. On view at the Resnick Pavilion): Read about it HERE and HERE.
According to LACMA,
If you have been in LACMA's Resnick Pavilion over the last week, you might have noticed a new large-scale painting by artist Mark Bradford. 150 Portrait Tone is based on an idea for a work that Bradford conceived after the fatal shooting of Philando Castile by a police officer in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in July 2016. Castile, a nutrition services supervisor at an elementary school, was shot after being pulled over in his car—an incident that was livestreamed on Facebook by Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, who was sitting in the passenger seat next to him.
The text repeats excerpts of Reynolds’s dialogue from the video. Bradford notes that he was moved by the multiple subjects Reynolds simultaneously addressed and the different spaces they occupied: her boyfriend, Castile, next to her (“stay with me”); the officer outside the car (“please, officer, don’t tell me that you just did this”); God (“Lord, please, Jesus, don’t tell me that he’s gone”); as well as the unknown receiver on the other side of her livestream (“please don’t tell me he just went like that”).
Like many of Bradford’s works, the mural-size composition contains elements of both abstraction and realism. In places, layers of manipulated paint render the text almost illegible. The dark form in the background, however, evokes all-too-real associations with the horrific shooting, such as Castile’s twisted arm and the dark-red bloodstain spread across his white shirt, both visible in the livestream feed.
The title, 150 Portrait Tone, refers to the name and color code of the pink acrylic used throughout the painting (most conspicuous in a large patch at the work’s bottom edge). Like the now-obsolete “flesh” crayon in the Crayola 64 box (the color was renamed “peach” in 1962), the color “portrait tone” carries inherent assumptions about who, exactly, is being depicted. In the context of Bradford’s painting, the title presents a sobering commentary on power and representation.
Here are a few things to consider about our LACMA field trip:
1) First, remember that this field trip is an all day event, and it replaces the Monday and Wednesday Lectures (Monday, July 10 and Wednesday, July 13)
2) You must fill out the University of California, Santa Barbara Waiver of Liability, Assumption of the Risk & Indemnity Agreement if you are going on the LACMA field trip, even if you are staying in Los Angeles that weekend. If you haven't, then submit it to me ASAP. This is mandatory UCSB policy.
LIABILITY WAIVER FOR FIELD TRIPS
If you are doing any activities off campus, students must fill out a liability waiver.
Students must submit the liability waiver form, and will not receive free admission to LACMA without it. If you show up to the museum without having done this, you will have to pay full admission and you will not legally be recognized as part of the UCSB Department of Art field trip. If you have difficulty filling out your DocuSign Liability Waiver, then email your professor and our Undergraduate Advisor, Catherine Jenks: arts-undergraduate@ucsb.edu.
3) Be sure that you have my email with you! If you arrive late, you want to be able to find us at the museum.
4) I would suggest eating a big breakfast since we won't be taking a break for lunch until later in the day. Furthermore, pack snacks for the road, and for lunch, unless you want to treat yourself to food at the museum. There are also food trucks that park across from the museum on Wilshire Blvd.
5) If you are driving from Santa Barbara, be sure to give yourself at least two hours to drive to LACMA.You never know what kind of traffic that you will encounter.
6) Wear comfortable shoes and clothing! We will be doing a lot of walking and hiking up stairs, so you want to be very comfortable.
7) Charge your phone since you will want to take a lot of pictures at the museum.
STUDENTS WHO DON'T GO TO LACMA:
Students who will not be going to LACMA will need to take a trip to downtown Santa Barbara to go to both the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the UCSB AD&A Museum.
Fill out the alternative museum trip Liability Waiver to SBMA: HERE
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
1130 State Street
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
Phone: 805.963.4364
Tues - Sun 11 am - 5 pm
Thurs 11 am - 8 pm
Closed Mondays and holidays
Admission: Students with ID $3.00. Free admission for Santa Barbara County students (K – college) with current ID/proof of local residency.
UCSB AD&A Museum (Located on campus. Hours: Wednesday–Sunday: 12–5 pm)
