Mark Bradford\u2019s monumental abstract paintings comprise countless small fragments\u2009\u2014\u2009often materials scavenged from storefronts, telephone poles, and billboards in the South Central neighborhood of Los Angeles, where he grew up. The artist has explained, \u201cI love the papered \u2018mosaics\u2019 I see in the community advertising the latest latest. . . . [When] the billboards are nice and thick and are about to fall off . . . I pull down what I need to create my collages. . . . Like those tagged up, repainted, tagged up, sanded, and repainted walls you pass everyday on the street, my process is both reductive and additive.\u201d Bradford is also known for redeploying hair dye and wave endpapers from his mother\u2019s salon, where he worked on and off for many years, and more recently for using home-repair caulking to amplify ridges and depths. It is usually impossible to recognize such individual materials on his surfaces; the power of Bradford\u2019s work is the power of cumulative materiality, at once enigmatic and evocative.<\/p>\n
The sweeping composition of A Siren beside a Ship<\/em> is built up from a mix of carbon paper, caulking, and acrylic gel medium that Bradford relentlessly layered, sanded, and layered again to create a dense, suggestive texture. The surface\u2019s striations recall rippling water and seascape paintings, which the artist has said summon for him the dark histories of conquistadors, colonization, and the transatlantic slave trade. Given this work\u2019s title, the wavelike markings also reference the dangerously enchanting voices of the Sirens of Greek mythology, as well as the sound of a modern-day alarm, combining a sense of allure with one of urgent warning.<\/p>\n","short_description":null,"dimensions":"259.1 \u00d7 365.7 cm (102 \u00d7 144 in.)","dimensions_detail":[{"depth":null,"width":365,"height":259,"diameter":null,"clarification":null}],"medium_display":"Mixed media on canvas","inscriptions":null,"credit_line":"Gift of the Joyner\/Giuffrida Collection","catalogue_display":null,"publication_history":null,"exhibition_history":null,"provenance_text":null,"edition":null,"publishing_verification_level":"Web Basic","internal_department_id":246,"fiscal_year":2017,"fiscal_year_deaccession":null,"is_public_domain":false,"is_zoomable":false,"max_zoom_window_size":843,"copyright_notice":null,"has_multimedia_resources":false,"has_educational_resources":false,"has_advanced_imaging":false,"colorfulness":0,"color":{"h":325,"l":57,"s":2,"percentage":0.11782380040768237,"population":589},"latitude":null,"longitude":null,"latlon":null,"is_on_view":false,"on_loan_display":null,"gallery_title":null,"gallery_id":null,"nomisma_id":null,"artwork_type_title":"Painting","artwork_type_id":1,"department_title":"Contemporary Art","department_id":"PC-8","artist_id":108592,"artist_title":"Mark Bradford","alt_artist_ids":[],"artist_ids":[108592],"artist_titles":["Mark Bradford"],"category_ids":["PC-830","PC-8","PC-142"],"category_titles":["African Diaspora","Contemporary Art","African American artists"],"term_titles":["painting (image making)","mixed media","black (color)","painting","21st Century","canvas","white (color)"],"style_id":"TM-12913","style_title":"21st Century","alt_style_ids":[],"style_ids":["TM-12913"],"style_titles":["21st Century"],"classification_id":"TM-9","classification_title":"painting","alt_classification_ids":[],"classification_ids":["TM-9"],"classification_titles":["painting"],"subject_id":"TM-11845","alt_subject_ids":["TM-11841"],"subject_ids":["TM-11845","TM-11841"],"subject_titles":["black (color)","white (color)"],"material_id":"TM-2527","alt_material_ids":["TM-3124"],"material_ids":["TM-2527","TM-3124"],"material_titles":["mixed media","canvas"],"technique_id":"TM-3891","alt_technique_ids":[],"technique_ids":["TM-3891"],"technique_titles":["painting (image making)"],"theme_titles":["African Diaspora","African American artists"],"image_id":"5fc89305-7b02-ef42-d93b-5fd55d073ce9","alt_image_ids":["86363cd3-c9cf-cacf-c618-72d19557c64e"],"document_ids":[],"sound_ids":[],"video_ids":[],"text_ids":[],"section_ids":[],"section_titles":[],"site_ids":[],"suggest_autocomplete_boosted":"A Siren Beside a Ship","suggest_autocomplete_all":[{"input":["2016.336"],"contexts":{"groupings":["accession"]}},{"input":["A Siren Beside a Ship"],"weight":854,"contexts":{"groupings":["title"]}}],"source_updated_at":"2026-06-05T15:59:34-05:00","updated_at":"2026-06-05T19:08:03-05:00","timestamp":"2026-07-12T01:50:35-05:00"},"info":{"license_text":"The `description` field in this response is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Generic License (CC-By) and the Terms and Conditions of artic.edu. All other data in this response is licensed under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) 1.0 designation and the Terms and Conditions of artic.edu.","license_links":["https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/publicdomain\/zero\/1.0\/","https:\/\/www.artic.edu\/terms"],"version":"1.14"},"config":{"iiif_url":"https:\/\/www.artic.edu\/iiif\/2","website_url":"http:\/\/www.artic.edu"}}