When: closing November 12, 2018
All around the inner ring of the Hirshhorn's third floor is Mark Bradford's "Pickett's Charge." Bradford has taken a reproduction of the cyclorama and transformed it into an examination of what's missing in our depictions of history.
In some places, he's scraped away the image to reveal what's underneath. In other places, he's added braids that run through the image. In yet other places, he's covered the image with colored paper. So yes, it is the cyclorama, but it's also not the cyclorama.
I was strongly reminded of the Kara Walker show I saw at American Art last December (how can it have been that long ago?). She also started with reproductions (in her case of 19th-century texts) and used them to show a more complete history. My blog post on her show is here: A Truth That Will Not Be Contained.
The wall notes suggest that this work can be used as a lens to see the current political climate in a new way, and I'm sure that's right. At this moment, the current political climate is so depressing, I'd rather just think about the Civil War. Yes, that's completely ridiculous, but here we are.
Verdict: Great work, made specifically for the Hirshhorn. Once the run is over, I'm assuming it will no longer exist. See it now!
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