When visitors walk into the Resnick Pavilion at LACMA, the first artwork they see is Mark Bradford’s 150 Portrait Tone. Layers of paper Bradford ripped and collaged culminate in a mural that reaches 20 feet high and spans 25 feet. The museum commissioned the work and presented it in 2017. It has been on view ever since—a permanent fixture in the Resnick Pavilion and a definitive work in the collection. 150 Portrait Tone frames every exhibition and human interaction around it.
“…Oh my God please don’t tell me he’s dead…”
“…Please Jesus don’t tell me that he’s gone...”
“…Please officer don’t tell me that you just did this…”
“…Stay with me…”
Bradford stenciled the transcript of Diamond Reynolds’s cries for her boyfriend, Philando Castile, across the mural. In 2016, Castile, thirty-two, was driving with his girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter in Saint Paul, Minnesota, when police officer Jeronimo Yanez pulled him over. The officer told Castile he had stopped him for a broken taillight. Dashboard camera footage shows that Yanez pulled over Castile because he “look[ed] like people” that were involved in a local robbery (NYT 2017). Yanez asked for Castile’s license and insurance. Castile said he had a firearm he was licensed to carry. Yanez replied, “Don’t reach for it then.” Castile assured him, “I’m not pulling it out.” Yanez fired seven shots through Castile’s car window, killing him. Yanez was charged with second-degree manslaughter and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm. On June 16, 2017, after five days of deliberation, a Minnesota jury acquitted him of all charges. LACMA exhibited 150 Portrait Tone four months later.
Bradford rarely shows the human form in his work. Rather, he reveals traces of the body (Copeland 2014: 817). From Africans who were sold on auction blocks to Philando Castile, Black people have been distinctly visible in the Americas. Bradford’s choice is, as he has described, political (ibid.). Like many of his 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 live-stream 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.
Dhyandra Lawson
References
Copeland 2014. Huey Copeland. “Painting After All: A Conversation with Mark Bradford.” Callaloo 37, no. 4 (2014): 81426.
NYT 2017. “Dash Camera Shows Moment Philando Castile Is Shot.” New York Times, June 20, 2017.
