Mark Bradford isn’t a newcomer — he received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 2009, and his paintings fetch up to a million dollars apiece — but I’d never heard of him or seen his work. Thanks as always to the masterful Calvin Tompkins, one of The New Yorker‘s most treasured veteran staff writers, for his fascinating and detailed portrait of this 6’7″ gay black AIDS-aware politically conscious former hair stylist turned painter-sculptor-multimedia artist.
another eye opens 