Local, USA

TINA MCDUFFIE: Artist Peter Bradley paints every day... BRADLEY: Every canvas is a new battle, and if I've got the paint, I'm gonna win the battle.

MCDUFFIE: ...inspired by music, color, and nature.

BRADLEY: When I was in New York City and was painting, of course, there were white artists who despised Black people, and they really despised me.

MCDUFFIE: An intimate reflection on art, resiliency, and creativity.

BRADLEY: Every sound has a color-- I could play you some music, and you could tell me what color you hear.

It's simple, I mean... (laughs) MCDUFFIE: "With Peter Bradley," on "Local, U.S.A." BRADLEY: Hm.

Hm, hm, hm.

Pretty (muted) far out.

I mean, serious movement with color.

It's very peculiar.

It's extremely peculiar, and, uh...

I don't know even how to explain it, or even start.

There's a shadow in the painting.

See it?

You see the reflection from these doors and into the light there?

The light fluctuates, and it gives me an idea how to introduce that shape right into that space.

I like that.

It may have to take another color there, which would be interesting.

What kind of color are you thinking about?

There's people that are portrait painters.

There's people that paint objects.

And then there's people that just paint color.

And they're called abstract.

I'm not certain it's abstract at all.

I think the concept, it sounds a little abstract, but the reality of it is, color's the most important thing.

Most people think of an artist, say, "I'm gonna draw this apple today and it's gonna be the best apple that's ever seen."

And they spend all their time drawing the (muted) apple.

Forget about the stem, just look at the color.

And it's a better thing than the apple itself.

You can't eat it, but the color's better.

That's the only way I see it, and, and other than that, I don't know what's going on.

In 1972, I had my first one-man show with Andr Emmerich.

Andr had the major gallery in the world at that time.

Abstract painting, color field painting.

I did three shows with him.

And I was the first Black person ever to show at 57th Street and Madison Avenue.

And, um, it's been 45 years since Andr showed me, and I've never been able to get a gallery since.

That was it.

And, um... You know, it just... You just paint because you have to paint, that's all.

You can't consider painting because you want to sell it, because... get into the game to sell it.

You didn't know it could be sold when you started doing it, anyway.

RAY CHARLES: And my father SINGERS: Night and day CHARLES: Well, he broke down and cried SINGERS: Night and day - Ray Charles!

(chuckles) SINGERS: Night and day CHARLES: Yeah, come on, baby SINGERS: Night and day CHARLES: I want you to hold my hand now SINGERS: Night and day CHARLES: Yeah, tight as you can BRADLEY: Everything you do every day, if you're a human being, makes you a better human being at what you're trying to be.

I think I'm at the point right now where I'm the best point I've ever been in my life as an artist.

And at this age, I'm lucky to still be doing it every day.

Trust me.

It's physically demanding starting it and getting it done.

Every canvas is a new battle, and, um, if I've got the paint, I'm gonna win the battle.

(whirring) I'm still intrigued by it all the time, making art.

The seasons give me encouragement to work.

Different times of the year, I get more inspired with color.

The changing color of leaves, what ice does.

Everything changes every day.

I'm impressed by that because that's just the way it works.

It's all about work, every day.

(exhales) Ooh.

(sighs) My grandson says I'm not realizing my age.

He says, "You're too old to do as much as you're doing today."

I had a shoulder replacement, both knees replaced.

(sighs) And COPD.

A lot of pain.

There's certain things I can't do, but I keep doing 'em all the time.

Carrying wood, walking up and down the hills.

My strength all goes to painting at this point.

Come on, I'm gonna be 80 years old, so I've gotta get another at least ten to 15 years in this gig, at least, to get on top of it.

(chuckles) (pencil scratching) Huh.

It's been my life, all my life, it's all I've ever done.

I've been painting since I was tiny, I think.

I had a studio just like this, a room on the top floor, and my mom would come up to the room and sit in the mornings with me and watch me draw.

And she said, "Well, I could do this, but someone's gotta work around here."

(chuckles): And she'd go to work, and that was it.

And then she bought me a lot of paint and I started to paint.

She was a great woman.

I grew up in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, where I was adopted as an infant.

My mother had no children of her own, and she was determined I was gonna draw all the time.

My mother said, "Do not leave your studio until you're satisfied."

She said, "You know, if you're gonna be a painter, you have to paint every day."

And I would start painting pictures and she'd look at it.

I'd say, "What do you think of this?"

She'd say, "Yeah, that's good, but it's not a real flower."

Because that's all I painted was flowers.

What else was I gonna paint?

I didn't know any different about anything.

Look at this guy.

Well, that's all I ever did.

My chore was always the flowers.

I planted the flowers and cut the flowers and put them in the house for my mom to look at.

It's an orchid, it's very rare.

It was a huge garden I had.

I learned how to use a shovel and a pick and be delighted when something came up with color on it that I planted.

I think that was the main message my mother was trying to give to me.

And we were the only Black people in the town that had flowers.

(chuckles) Tragic, isn't it?

That's really tragic.

(wood cracks) The paint's frozen.

(whirring) (traffic humming in distance) ("Blue Train" by John Coltrane playing) RAPPAPORT: What are some of the CDs you got over there?

- This is John Coltrane.

Outrageous CD.

Major musicians would come to our house all the time and hang out.

That's what we're listening to now.

To Trane.

We had a huge house way on the top of a big hill overlooking the river and the railroad tracks and the train station.

Bradley, where I got my name from, was a waiter on the railroad.

So he'd meet all these Black guys, musicians, and he'd go, "I got a house in Connellsville near Pittsburgh.

"You can stay there overnight for such-and-such amount of money," and they would all come and stay there on their way to Pittsburgh, 'cause the train didn't go to Pittsburgh.

That was it.

Art Blakey, he was from Pittsburgh.

And he would bring Erroll Garner, Harold Betters.

The Miles band came to there one time, not the whole band, but Paul Chambers was with him.

Some people out the Basie band.

There were so many of them.

And they would come to our house and eat dinner and sit and talk, and I got records.

I have to have music, otherwise I can't paint.

Anytime I go in that studio, that sound system goes on, and it's a great one.

(whirring) (jazz playing on speakers) Music is the, the key that opens your heart.

I think I can promote the feeling of what I'm thinking about with music to color.

And if I can get the color to go with the music I'm listening to and my interpretation, then I think I have a successful painting.

("Autumn Leaves" by Erroll Garner playing) This is becoming more like we're listening to.

You see right here?

This cloud here is becoming more like we're listening to this music.

(music continues) Every sound has a color.

I could play you some music, and you could tell me what color you hear.

(chuckles): It's simple, I mean, really.

And I think that's what it's based on.

Different instruments have a different color spectrum on them.

The bass is always gonna be blue, black, or tan.

Trumpet, you can go to yellow, you can go to white, you can go to silver.

(trumpet playing solo) (drums playing solo) When I hear the rhythm section, when a great drummer's playing, like Art Blakey, Max Roach, they push everything forward.

Blakey was one, the greatest drummer of all time.

And, um, he came to our house four or five times or so, even more than that, when I was a kid.

I was listening to Art Blakey's band when I did this.

The movement interacts with the music, and that can interact with painting in a certain way, with color.

Like, I can almost dance with color instead of dancing physically.

Music, when you see it in person, you see these people doing all this kind of things, they're doing all this kind of stuff, that's what gets into the painting situation part of it.

See, like, when I come in here, I'm ready to play.

Whatever instrument I'm picking up, I'm ready to play it, you know, in color.

("Blues for Trombones" by J.J. Johnson playing) Jazz is completely abstract when it comes to certain people in jazz.

It lifts your spirit, and it adds color to your mind on a lot of levels.

Because, you know, the blues, all they do is talk about how sad it is being Black.

But modern jazz, they had a tendency to set the blues up and then spark it with something, something really sharp that let you know how intelligent they were.

And that's where I come in on the deal, I think.

That's what I look for.

What do you want to hear, Stan Kenton?

Dizzy Gillespie?

Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins?

Art Blakey, Jimmy Cobb?

I'll play you something that I like a lot.

Let's see if I can find it.

(intro to "Summertime" playing) RAPPAPORT: So what's this?

- Sarah Vaughan.

I love her.

VAUGHAN: Summertime (Bradley murmurs) VAUGHAN: And the livin' is easy - I saw her in Pittsburgh when I was a kid.

VAUGHAN: Oh, your daddy's rich - And your mama's good-looking.

VAUGHAN: And your ma is good-looking - She'd better be, if your daddy's rich.

VAUGHAN: So, hush, little baby - Hush, little baby.

Don't you cry.

VAUGHAN: Don't you cry BRADLEY: My mother made money.

Because she had foster children.

64 of them, she had.

There were no white kids, they were all Black kids.

And she treated all of us like love.

Every one of us was treated with great love from her.

Only two of us were adopted.

I didn't know I was adopted till, I guess, I was in maybe eighth or ninth grade.

And if my mother knew, she never told me who my real parents were.

For a long time, you know, I thought Miles Davis might have been my father.

He never said he wasn't.

Miles was in our house one time and my mother's brother said, "He's just like that little ugly, Black father of his over there," and he pointed to Miles.

And he was the type of Black person that, if you were one shade darker than him, you were considered no good, 'cause Black people wanted to be white.

They didn't want be that dark.

And I was confused, because I was just a child and, um...

I thought that Bradley was my father, 'cause I had the same name.

And my mama said... Bam!

She hit him with a dish cloth, a wet dish cloth in the mouth.

He never spoke to me again, never.

That story existed from the time I was a child, that he was my father.

Miles is only 14 years older than me, but I know guys from the town I came from that had kids at 13.

(chuckles): You know?

So as long as something comes out the gun, you can do it, I guess, I don't know.

All I know is, I was adopted and there's no record saying anything about a father one way or the other.

You never saw my trumpet, have you?

(playing) This is the same trumpet that Miles Davis plays.

I had four or five of Miles's mouthpieces.

These two are his, I know that.

That's, that's one of them.

When I was a kid, I had a trumpet, and I was getting pretty good at it.

And the teacher told my mother my lips were too big to be a good trumpet player.

So she opened up a drawer on my desk and threatened him with an ax and she said, "Well, is Louis Armstrong's lips smaller than his?"

Scared the (muted) out of the guy.

She terrified him.

And I never played anymore-- I quit.

But I was painting at the same time.

But that's, that's what I realized can happen to a young child with a racist comment coming at them like that, you know?

And my mother, she made sure that I was the best-dressed kid, Black or white, in the town.

There was a place called Gigliotti.

They made custom-made clothing.

And my mother bought all my clothes from Gigliotti's.

Sometimes people would make fun of me because of the clothes I wore.

And she would say that I was special, and not to be concerned about anybody, "Black, white, blue, or grizzly gray," that's what she would say.

She said, "Don't let anyone (muted) with you."

My mother was a powerful woman in that town.

I didn't have any resentment about being Black.

We had brand-new cars all the time.

And I had money in my pocket all the time.

I didn't have many Black friends because of that.

I got on top of it because I had the clothes, I traveled, and I had the big mouth.

"Go (muted) yourself, I don't care what you think about me."

And that was it-- "If you don't like it, let's go out in the back of the house and take care of it."

I didn't finish my senior year, because I didn't like Connellsville anymore.

Nothing there for me to do.

(geese honking) This is the loneliest I've ever been in my life.

I'm here by myself all the time because my wife works so we can pay the bills.

She works outside the house, and I stay here all the time, and I paint day and night and hope for the sale of paintings.

This is where I come first thing in the morning, and then to the studio every day-- it's kind of redundant, but that's what I do every day of my life.

I don't leave the property.

So if you don't go anywhere, you don't talk to anyone, but people come to see you, it's kind of difficult.

It's like living on another planet, almost, which I don't mind, as long as it's my planet.

Time to get rid of all this (muted) here.

I can plant something that's hipper than this.

(grunting) Why would I keep that?

It's close to 30 years ago, getting this house.

You think it's a wreck now, you should have seen it then.

I love it here.

I don't think I care if I ever go back to Manhattan again.

I'm tired of paying rent.

This house was built in 1709, is what I understand.

The Dutch, I know they're noted for stone houses, but people say this house was built by Black slaves.

Slaves built this house, that's what I hear, on the down-low.

I can believe that, 300 years back.

You know?

Dutch know what stone is.

They know how to work with it.

But so do we, you know, if you think, think about Egypt.

I've only sold one picture in two years here.

I paint pictures every (muted) day and they're here, but, you know, Jesus!

We have no place to put 'em.

What can I say?

I'm not gonna cry about it.

I'm just not in position to sell paintings.

I mean, no one knows where I live, and I never go to New York City.

And no one here buys paintings.

That's why my wife has two jobs.

(wind whistling) Watch me start this fire.

Fires are like people.

They take a long time to get to know, then they warm up-- they start slow.

They start very slow.

You have to build them from the bottom up.

Once you get it built, that (muted) burn up, boy.

When I dropped out of high school, I went to Detroit to live with my older sister, Ellen Wright.

Black people that were just starting to run into money on a hip way, like Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson, I mean, they all were in that neighborhood.

And Aretha was always parked on the corner in the Cadillac, you know?

I met Aretha Franklin, and she was just another talented kid in the neighborhood.

I used to see her every day.

And at night, sometimes, I'd go to the nightclubs.

The first time I saw Miles get it for real was in the Minor Key.

He had Coltrane with him.

Miles would always hang out with me in Detroit.

I mean, he would talk to me and have conversations about things when he wouldn't look at anybody else.

And I thought that was important.

When I went to Detroit, it was a whole different life.

I saw Black people driving brand-new cars.

I saw Black people wearing a certain type of clothing.

And I saw Black people owning their own houses.

Black people were able to buy at Boston Boulevard, Chicago Boulevard, LaSalle-- beautiful houses.

I didn't see that in Connellsville.

It gave me a sense that I could do better.

And that's how I got to see museums and things in Detroit.

De Kooning was the first one got my attention when I was a kid, I think.

De Kooning took the human figure and pushed it around to an abstraction look or whatever.

But I didn't feel that he set the pace for abstraction.

I think Pollock did.

But I don't know many Black abstract artists that were successful at making abstract art.

Two that I knew that were great, Ed Clark was a great friend of mine, I knew him in France.

And then there's Sam Gilliam, and they're considered major Black artists in the world, abstract artists.

They gotta make some room for me.

(laughs): That's all.

It's a hard struggle to be recognized if you're a Black person if you don't have a horn in your mouth or a microphone in your mouth.

I don't have that.

I have a brush in my hand, sometimes.

My feeling is that, that Black artists have been pushed into some kind of Realism feature that really is not acceptable to our race, because we're abstract people.

(chuckles): African art is totally abstract.

What is happening?

Look at that.

I mean, come on, you know?

Things like this are so beautiful.

Why bother with painting Realism now in America, when Andrew Wyeth and all of them did it?

You know, why bother?

It just doesn't make any sense, when we came from a place that invented that stuff.

We invented all this art.

This is pretty abstract.

You can see Picasso stealing it-- you can feel him.

He stole every bit of this.

But Picasso wasn't abstract, he always had a figure in the situation-- that's what trapped him.

I've been looking at Picasso and Braque and Lger and Delaunay and all these people, all these years, and they all had to get into some figurative bull(muted) to get their message across.

What is some woman gonna get my message across?

I mean, just sitting on a piece of canvas?

Had nothing to do with the color.

So I'm assuming that if you got more and more figurative, I mean, non-figurative and more abstract, you had a chance to produce color in a more pronounced way than it was being done.

I did some figurative things when I first went to art school, and then I just decided it wasn't worth it.

There's drawings in that box over there that are figurative.

I'm shocked I kept these drawings.

This is a model that was in the life drawing class.

I was at Society of Arts and Crafts in Detroit, Michigan.

1960.

I was walking down the street and I saw this beautiful building.

Then I realized it was an art school designed by Yamasaki.

So I went there and talked to them and they said, "You're on full scholarship."

I learned how to engrave, but I didn't pay much attention to drawing until one of the teachers I had said, "Well, you can't draw."

And I said, "I can draw better than you."

I tried to draw what I saw.

Then I realized that wasn't important.

That cameras could take care of that.

You didn't have to do it that perfect.

So I just started adding a little bit to it here and there.

Painting class was interesting.

He would always criticize the paintings I was doing.

He said, "You can't do that," and I said, "Why not?"

Yeah, then I quit.

I did not graduate from the Society of Arts and Crafts.

I wasn't good in schools.

I didn't like schools.

Came home and told my mom, "Send me the money, I'm going to Manhattan."

I remember getting on the bus.

My sister said, "You'll die, honey.

You can't stay in New York City."

Said, "I'm gonna try it."

So my mother gave me a bus fare and I came to New York City.

Never went back to Detroit.

(traffic humming in distance) Oh, boy, they're coming out of here like crazy.

Here's what happened when I first came to New York: I got a job as a guard at the Hispanic Society of America.

And then one day, on my lunch, I was engraving, and the director of printmaking at the Metropolitan Museum was there, and he said, "I want that-- will you give me that?"

I said, "I can't give it to you, I'll sell it to you."

He bought my first engraving and put in the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum.

It was of a girl from Detroit, and I just used this Matsumi Maki, because Matsumi Maki was a Japanese engraver.

I mean, I got into the Met by mistake.

I didn't ask him to put anything in that collection.

He just did it.

And then I worked at the Guggenheim.

What's the name of the department?

We hung the exhibitions.

I don't think there's ever been another Black person ever worked in the Guggenheim.

I might have been the first.

In 1964, we put up a Calder retrospective.

Calder was represented by Perls Galleries at that time.

Now, one day, Klaus Perls and Calder came to see how the exhibition was going.

And I was the one that put "The Ghost" up in the ceiling at the top of the Guggenheim.

"The Ghost," that was the name of it.

I suggested it go there, and they said, "Nothing can hang from the Guggenheim top."

I said, "It doesn't weigh anything!"

So the guy that was head of the construction department, they said, "Well, if you say, Peter, 'Do it,' you go up and hang it there."

So I'm way up into the top, where the skylight was, and hung it from there and dropped it.

And Calder said... (grumbling) "Give him a job, Klaus."

So Klaus Perls came and hired me from the Guggenheim.

They were the top modern art gallery in the entire world at that time.

And they had Picasso's contracts and, and Soutine, Braque, Lger.

Perls hired me to construct and repaint and repair Calders.

Then they found out I could express myself when it came to art.

And so finally, he said, "Would you be interested in showing people paintings?"

And I was selling $30,000 or $40,000 worth of Calder a week.

And then every time Calder would come to New York, he'd do drawings with me.

I don't own one of those drawings.

I have no idea where they disappeared to.

This is an engraving, one of two.

D-E-K-T-O-R. "Dexter Walked In."

I was listening to Dexter Gordon, the saxophone player.

It's colored ink, it's printed.

You see, when you put your hand on top of it like this here, you can feel the embossment-- these things are all raised.

Boy, I didn't know I had that bad boy.

Haven't seen them in 20-some years.

I didn't know it was in that box.

That box has been upstairs in the attic for a long time.

And I bet there's more of them up there.

(exhales) Lot of stuff up here, isn't it?

This might be a big nothing, but it's wrapped pretty secure to be nothing.

Okay, I'm ready for it.

Better be something I like in here.

Almost there.

Oh, they're engravings!

(chuckling): Shall we look at them?

"Robert Blackburn Studios, 1/1."

It's one of one, yeah.

I was a printmaker at Robert Blackburn Studio.

He was absolutely terrific.

I got free material to work on, I didn't have to pay to go there, and I could come morning, noon, and night.

It was open 24 hours a day.

So it was filled with little old women who wanted to make little flower etchings and stuff.

And that's how he stayed alive.

And he gave people that were serious about trying to make abstract prints with aquatint, etching, engraving, he paid attention to them.

I'm gonna tell you something, that's not a bad print.

It's very difficult to print, and that's the only proof of it.

That's probably why I stopped-- it's too much work.

Huh.

Like, this is pretty terrific here.

You see this, see where this white overlaps here?

Then there's this kind of stuff here, makes it feel like it's coming right on top of this space here.

This space here and this space.

It sets up layers of getting more aggressive to it, and you can feel the depth of the, the engraving right through here, by feeling it.

But the deepest engraving, I must say, I was not about to use a burin to do this.

You see, because I can show you engraving tools, and they're about this big, and to make a line that big and that deep, you gotta be on top of it.

You gotta be Superman.

This is electric tool that you cut wood with, it's, uh...

This boy here.

The width of the blade is the same width as the lines on the engraving.

After a couple of years, Klaus Perls promoted me to be associate director of the gallery.

And Dolly said, "I'm gonna give you a charge account at Bloomingdale's!"

I said, "My clothes are all made at Meledandri, I'm sorry."

And she looked at me and said, "Who in the hell's Meledandri?"

Klaus said, "He's an important tailor, in New York."

I had about eight or nine suits.

Roland Meledandri.

We got to be friends-- he was a good guy.

I remember one time I went in there, and I think Joel Grey was there, and he's, "Ah, gotta stop 'cause Mr. Bradley's here, and he's only here for a few minutes."

'Cause I would go in my lunchtime to get a shirt made or whatever.

I can show them to you, I still have them!

This one here is Meledandri, but the label's gone.

I have no Meledandri labels left, but I could give you the names of people that stole most of it.

This is custom-made.

I bought this shirt with Miles.

He started some (muted) with me about his shirts.

I said, "This place here makes shirts."

We went into Sulka-- on Park Avenue?

This is suede, and this came from Blakey.

This is one of Art Blakey's jackets.

He stole mine and I took his.

I never put this on in my life.

I've never put this on, either.

What the (muted) is this?

RAPPAPORT: You kind of like those hunting jacket-style things.

- Well, I'm in the country, you know?

I'm not walking down Fifth Avenue in this!

This is, this is for the country.

Anytime I've been involved with the police in Manhattan, they've left me alone.

They've left me alone, I think, because of my clothes.

In fact, one, one policewoman tried to have a date with me because of my clothes.

But this is my favorite, the red one.

Black people like red.

All Black people I know like red.

I need another closet.

The people that came to Perls were very wealthy people, and they didn't want to be seen in museums, in the public.

So I'd have to spend all day long talking to the most famous people in the world and the richest people in the world about paintings.

You know, Ginger Rogers would come in there and talk (muted) to me all day long.

Kirk Douglas was there a lot.

Greta Garbo was there.

Bette Davis, you know?

And, and I had to deal with Paul McCartney.

He came there one day with his wife to buy something.

He just couldn't talk to anybody.

You know, I didn't care about him.

I mean, I knew Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane, so what did I care about him?

Those little songs he sang.

(laughing): I didn't care about them little songs!

Pretty funny.

These are all tapes of different musicians.

It's, it's super music, but I don't know what the (muted) it is anymore.

This is Max Roach and Clifford Brown, side two-- great band.

Super band.

Early on in my career, I used spray guns.

It was easy to get it done quickly.

I'd work all day long at Perls and come home and get a can of beer and spray for two hours, and I'd get five paintings going.

And you can cover a lot of surface, keep it wet, and paint.

But I realize I don't need it now, because now I can, my road to success with painting now is water.

(music playing in background) See, I can get the water to go now and just a touch of a bit of color in that water, I can do the same thing with spray gun.

Better than a spray gun, 'cause a spray gun just sits on top.

This will soak into the canvas.

You have to get it so the canvas accepts paint instead of looking stupid.

Well, you know, you see these paintings where the paint sits right on top of the canvas, and nothing all around it, it's spotless around it.

That's one way to handle canvas.

I think canvas is designed more to handle the color with stain the wetter it is.

The deeper you get the, the pores open in the canvas, the more it will do something different for you.

Any color you put on it will spread tiny, tiny, tiny bits, little bits.

Like, that green goes up under there, but it stops.

You don't see where it goes.

All of them stop with this cloud.

Now, when that cloud of water dries, you have no idea what's gonna be there to see.

That's another tricky thing, you know?

Pretty interesting.

And there's already things I'm seeing that you couldn't paint with a brush if your life depended on it.

And you can feel you're in a storm or wherever, you know?

It's a storm of color.

It's supposed to rain hard tonight.

Well, we'll see what kind of present the rain brings.

It could bring-- if it's water, it could bring another present.

I hope, if it happens.

(engine starts) Water does the whole trick.

It's the main ingredient for us, too.

For everything-- for plants and the whole deal.

I like gardens.

Because, you know, if you put energy into them, they give the energy back in beauty and color some kind of way.

You get ideas from plants-- they grow.

And if they like you, they really grow, and you can see it.

In 1966, I went to Yale University to be in the graduate painting program.

Tworkov was head of the department.

He came to my studio.

I don't know how he knew who I was.

He said, "You can come to Yale if you want to."

And I said, "Yeah, sure."

He never once looked at a painting, looked at the floor the whole time he was there, like this.

And he never spoke to me when I was at Yale.

He didn't like me, he said I couldn't paint, never would be an artist.

And I said, "Why did you give me a scholarship to come here?"

He said, "We want you to travel to different states and bring Black people to this school."

I said, "Go (muted) yourself," and I walked out of Yale.

Come look, there's a face here!

Very strange.

Looks like me.

This picture was photographed in the '60s when I needed a haircut.

When I lived at 654 Broadway with William T. Williams.

William T. Williams, he went to Yale same time I was at Yale.

He said, "I found a studio.

Maybe you want to come in and partner with me."

I said, "Yeah, cool," on Broadway, 654 Broadway.

The rent was $150 a month.

654 Broadway was filled with famous artists.

Joel Shapiro had a floor upstairs and Noland lived downstairs.

I don't think I could have got as successful as I did if it hadn't been for Kenneth Noland.

Noland's the one who discovered me.

And through Kenneth Noland, I became very close with Clement Greenberg, the great critic of his time, the one who discovered Jackson Pollock.

He used to come to Perls and spend the whole damn day there at Perls talking to me.

He talked to very few people.

People would beg him to say hello to them, artists.

Clem's concept, color supersedes subject matter, took the forefront in art.

That color supersedes subject matter, you know that for real, because once you see the color, you don't care what it is, as long as you see the color.

So it's considered abstract.

He was the big mouth writing about art all the time and talking (muted).

RAPPAPORT: Writing where?

- I don't know, because I don't read.

I don't read anything.

RAPPAPORT: But where do you get your information on the world?

If it's not through reading... - Through my eyes.

The eyes that I have, like your eyes.

You see things and you do something about it-- that's all.

My seeing translates into what I paint.

And I don't know how that works, 'cause I'm not that smart.

Everyone that paints picks up a unique color situation that they, they work with.

Ken Noland really put the picture in my head the right way.

Noland and Jules Olitski had a jump on it, and then William T. Williams was doing the same thing, and all of them were playing around the same way, you know, putting the stripes down, but there was no action and motion in the color.

It didn't move far enough for me.

So I had to be able to think about color at the same time, but get it abstract with motion on it in some kind of way.

You know, the pictures I'm trying to paint, I think you can actually move in the color in some kind of way.

You know, and there's no such thing as the wrong way to paint.

Every day, I'm trying something new to put down on that canvas, 'cause I'm not looking for a Peter Bradley look.

I'm just looking to paint a picture.

(music playing in background) See, I'm trying to get my hand out of it to make it feel like the human hand is not involved in it, it's all accidental nature feeling about it.

You get the color to move on its own.

Once you can get the color down and the texture, see, color by itself is kind of boring.

If you can get it to where it's touchable and whatever, then that makes sense.

It was painted in Santa Barbara three years ago, at the Squire Foundation.

I had a limited amount of paint to paint with, that's my problem here.

That's how I started putting these, these patches inside.

Because to mix this paint is ridiculous, you know what I'm saying?

The paint that's left in the bottom of a bucket becomes very abstract once it dries.

And you look in that bucket and you see this green, but there are several greens in there.

You see?

And then you've got a painting right there.

And a reverse-- another one right there!

In 1971, the Whitney Museum did an exhibition called "Contemporary Black Artists in America," curated by Robert Doty.

Doty had heard about me and came to get my advice, 'cause I was the only Black person on Madison Avenue other than a African art dealer.

Politically, he had to do that show, because Black people had to be recognized as artists some kind of way.

And I think he came to me to find out what to say in public, 'cause he really wanted to say the right things about Black people.

It was extremely controversial.

It was protested by a lot of artists that thought they were excluded.

He asked me to put a painting in the exhibition, but I refused.

I refused because I didn't like most of the art that was in the exhibition.

A lot of it was figurative from Pop art, and I didn't want to be associated with that situation.

And I put my friend in who made the cat, Junior.

Nathaniel Hunter, Jr. (laughs): I put, I put him in the show!

He camps out across the street from the Whitney Museum in a tent, with a thing over his head, watching everyone that goes in, he was... And he died, one of my best friends in the world, Junior.

Some guy.

He told me one day, "I talked to 10,000 people today."

I said, "You're full of (muted)."

He said, "No, I wasn't, I was downtown "at the World Trade Center and I spoke to everybody came in that door."

RAPPAPORT: And he was an artist, as well?

- Uh, he made the cat!

You tell me if he's an artist or not-- I don't know.

A few months earlier, the de Menils commissioned Larry Rivers to do an exhibition in Houston, Texas.

And I was in it.

The de Menils were wealthy collectors of art internationally.

And John de Menil's wife, Dominique, was an art curator.

They had hired Larry Rivers to do an exhibition for them with Black people.

It was called "Some American History."

Larry was white, and for whatever reason, he did a show all about Black identity and slavery.

He had a few Black people put things in, including me, but most of the art was about him, and promoting him.

It turned out to be a horrible exhibition.

People being hung, or slaves being poor, or someone picking cotton in a picture.

Some stupid (muted)!

And my, one of my pieces in there makes me sick when I think about it.

He did something really nasty-- I made the sculpture, and when I saw it in the exhibition, he had cut photographs out and pasted them all over my sculpture.

Looked like he took a hit of heroin and did a show.

It was just horrible.

I think it disappointed John de Menil.

He was a client of Perls, so he came and got me, and I did "The De Luxe Show" for him.

He had this theater that was there called the De Luxe Theater.

It was a movie theater that was deteriorated in the Black neighborhood in Houston, Texas.

And he and I went and looked at it, and I said, "Listen, this place has to be rebuilt," and that's what they did.

And it's an incredible viewing space.

And I refused to do an all-Black show.

I brought white and Black people into "The De Luxe Show."

Well, I had an idea that I could bring Black artists to some sort of recognition in the art world, which we didn't, had none.

Abstract painting by the top white artists in the world and the top Black artists in the world.

This catalogue here shows some of the greatest artists of their time.

Well, Anthony Caro was world-famous, and so was Noland at that time.

I selected everything that was in there, and it was an interracial exhibition, for the first time in the history of American art.

I didn't know any female artists other than Virginia Jaramillo.

She's good enough to be in there.

She's the best female painter in New York City at that time.

I think that women artists were discriminated at the same time, especially if they were Black-- they didn't count for anything.

But, you know, I just dealt with the art.

I didn't deal with the racial politics involved in it.

Me and Greenberg and Noland, the three of us were there.

This is when we were putting the show together here.

Both of us had just come from New York City, the same plane, and he stole my cowboy hat.

I said, "Clem, I want my hat back."

He said, "Ah, I'll give it back."

Never got it back.

That's me and Noland putting it together.

And that's Helen Winkler there.

She worked for the de Menils, Helen Winkler.

I didn't know I took my shirt off.

It was very hard work, and I was determined I was gonna hang the show, and the Perls were furious, because I was going back and forth on the weekends to Texas.

I stayed in his mansion, a serious place.

John de Menil left his house and rented a hotel room, because the Black guys moved in from everywhere.

They came from everywhere-- California, New York.

And they all came in and stayed there with me.

(laughs): They all moved in!

It was pretty funny.

My thing was to get the entire community involved.

I made a point that I wanted all the kids in the neighborhood to come see this show.

I thought it was simple enough for kids to understand.

It's just color and movements and things, and it looks like they could make it.

I think kids' eyes are the best eyes in the world on art, because kids can tell the truth.

You know, grown-ups will lie, you know, all the time, make themselves seem important or whatever, they'll make a comment.

And the richer you are, the more important a comment is and the more damaging it is to whoever hears it.

And this blue paintings of mine went, vanished.

Never been seen again.

It was stolen.

Any of those paintings that belonged to me there, I have no idea where they're at this day.

They disappeared.

1971 was an extremely interesting year for me.

Noland was showing with Andr Emmerich at that time.

Andr Emmerich was a premier gallery and major color-field dealer in Zurich, Switzerland, Downtown on West Broadway in New York City, and 57th Street and Madison Avenue.

He said, "Look, I think you're gifted, and I'm gonna take you to Emmerich."

He said, uh, "Peter's a great artist."

And the next thing I know, I was showing Andr Emmerich.

1970s, I was doing quite well financially.

I had everything that I wanted-- great houses, great art, money in my pocket, great suits.

I was not concerned about anything.

I had a studio on Wooster Street, outrageous space-- I mean, 20,000 square feet or something like that, from one block to the next, and skylights all the way through it.

It was 30 foot tall where the skylights were.

I met Adger 50 years ago, at least.

And he photographed me a lot and published me in his book.

He's a good guy, and he knows how to work that camera to death.

I think Adger's a terrific artist-- he always was.

And a wonderful friend of mine for years and years and years.

He likes what I do, and I like what he does.

I don't have any of his photographs, and he doesn't have any of my paintings, but that's the deal.

And I worked with an architect named Paul Heyer, who designed all my spaces in New York City.

A great architect, I thought.

That bathtub was designed by him.

I said stainless steel, but he designed the bathtub, and it's been in every place I ever lived.

I still have it.

I can lay in there and think about a lot of things, man, I tell you.

That's what I do, I go sit in the bathtub and look up through the ceiling and look at the flowers and stuff.

I can get an idea about a painting.

See that?

See what he's done to it?

He's decimated it.

That's what it looks like when he leaves.

Every day, I cut them off.

It's a good job for an old man.

And the more you cut it, the more it grows.

The more water you put on it, the more it grows.

It's like painting pictures-- the more water I put on the paintings, the more they grow.

Can't beat this.

I like it like this, shiny and wet.

See these circles here, how they come alive once water's on them?

They fly off and go different places.

These are just complicated dreams.

They have nothing to do with reality, I don't think.

When you have dreams, they, they do this in your head.

They fly away.

When I was in New York City and was painting, of course there were white artists that despised Black people.

And they really despised me.

In 1972, I had my first one-man exhibition on 57th Street.

And, uh, white artists that were known showed up, but they wouldn't come in the gallery.

They stood in the hallway.

They all stood outside in the lobby and wouldn't come into the gallery?

If that's not racist, you tell me what the (muted) it is.

But they all pulled that off.

I think the only one that was cool in the whole deal was Larry Poons, 'cause he wouldn't, didn't have a blindfold on.

Larry's a good guy.

But, I mean, the racism was just unbelievable in the art world.

I mean, it just... Man, it was horrible.

I didn't have a chance to really confront it the way other Black artists did, because they knew I worked at Perls.

And they knew that I had some connection to real money.

You know, I, I didn't know any Black artists to be around.

I was in Downtown Manhattan, I wasn't in Harlem.

I wasn't sitting around in Black bars arguing about, you know, what white people are doing to me.

I was trying to paint-- I was by myself.

I'd go into that loft after working all day long at Perls, I went across the street and got something to eat, and came back and painted, went back to work the next day.

But I was disliked by a lot of people on Madison Avenue, I knew that for a fact.

They did not understand how I could work at Perls.

And this one guy, he refused to talk to a Black person about art.

And he got pissed off at me and wrote this long letter to the Perls about how much he hated me, and how they were gonna get in trouble having me in the gallery.

Perls's wife went to his, his room in the hotel and laid it on him, said, "You don't know who you're talking about and what you're talking to."

She was a tough woman, Dolly Perls.

She was a serious woman, and she wasn't a racist.

RAPPAPORT: Were other Black artists resentful... - Oh, yeah.

- ...of you?

- Not a one of 'em ever came to the gallery.

None of the other Black artists.

Not a one in the world came to say hello to me.

I get cut by both sides of the fence, white and Black.

There's Black people that despise me and there's white people that despise me.

I mean, uh, my personality is not accepted by a lot of people, 'cause I'm not your average Black boy.

I've been different places-- they don't like that.

They want you to be a homeboy, and I'm not a homeboy.

You know, I got some other things going on in my life other than homeboy.

This "Black art" talk, this "white art" talk, I'm not interested in it.

And I'm not interested in political art.

I'm kind of a misfit in the culture, I think.

I really do.

After ten years of working at Perls, I decided that, uh, I had to leave nine-to-five.

I wanted to paint.

I did not want to go to work every day and talk to famous people and listen to their bull(muted).

I quit.

My last exhibition with Emmerich was 1976 in Zurich, Switzerland.

And, um, no one else ever took me on.

No other gallery in Manhattan was gonna show a Black artist that was as big as Emmerich was.

But nobody that I knew had a gallery then, white, Black, blue, green, or gray.

They weren't showing anybody.

I think color-field painting got in trouble, and it's still in trouble.

It got in trouble after Clement Greenberg died.

And then Andr Emmerich died.

No one else was handling it.

And then Noland died, surprisingly, you know, which, uh... (sniffs) Al Loving's dead, Noland's dead, Olitski's dead.

Like, I don't know where it is now, the whole color-field school of painting.

(smacks lips) I'm still here.

(laughs) (exhales) Whew!

That pile is 75 paintings that have to be cropped.

That's from a huge painting.

It's just a cut.

It's very difficult to get the entire painting to go all at once.

And then sometimes the major part of the painting fails, and I have to depend on looking at certain sections of it that are working.

I, I don't think this picture's successful, because the color is not hooked up right.

It has to be contained more.

That's pretty good.

I could cut the top down some more.

That's a better picture now.

You see it?

When you get close to the painting, you, you tape it off and see what you're looking at, and then you walk away without looking at the painting.

Look at anything else without looking at the painting, and then turn around and look at it real quick.

And that tells you where the painting's at.

It's not a bad picture now.

Now it's becoming a painting.

I think this picture is small.

New York City, this is the main thing you do.

Smoke marijuana and do this.

I remember doing this for hours with Greenberg and Noland, just hours.

Ay!

Prick.

Now, here's where it really gets good-- watch this.

This is the shot.

There's two paintings.

Nothing wrong with that, do you know what I'm saying?

You don't need all that (muted) at the bottom and all that stuff, it's ridiculous.

A lot of people think, "Well, I'm gonna paint a picture."

They paint a picture, and they say, "Well, it's done."

They think it's done-- well, (muted).

It might just be getting started.

You know?

Because they're terrified to cut it or to edit anything out of it because they think that they're, they're right all the time, the artist, and it's bull(muted).

You can paint a picture and, and find a picture.

I'm finding another picture down in the bottom.

Here, I'll show it to you.

Yeah.

It's a nice little picture.

And there's a whole other canvas that I can paint on, at the bottom.

This is a piece that's never been thrown away from a picture that's been painted God knows when.

So I'm gonna try to see if I can get, bring it back to life.

Not gonna throw it away.

'Cause this (muted) costs a lot of money.

I, I run out of money every day.

I don't care how much money it is, I'm gonna run out of it.

And I'm just starting to realize what that's about, because, uh, we're relying on staying alive with the sale of my paintings.

I've never been under that pressure in my life, ever.

(crickets chirping, birds tweeting) (rain falling softly) My mother died in 1980, and it was very difficult for me after that.

The house was sold in Connellsville and was torn down.

It had been several years since I quit Perls and had my last show with Emmerich.

And, um, to save rent, I moved my studio to an upper floor of an old firehouse on Lafayette Street in Chinatown.

It was still owned by the city, but I paid this Chinese guy $800 a month or something like that, I'm not sure.

And, um, in 1985, the city transferred the lease on the firehouse to a new landlord.

They wanted my floor, and tried all kinds of games to throw me in the street.

I took it to court legally, but it didn't work.

I went through all the money I had to try to defend myself, and, uh, the judge just gave it to him, that's all.

I put the things that I thought were valuable into storage.

I walked away from my paintings, 'cause I had nowhere to take them.

And they were either stolen or thrown away.

I don't know.

After I lost that firehouse, I drifted around.

I stayed at different friends' places for very short periods of time.

But I also spent a lot of nights in doorways on the streets of Manhattan.

And if you want to get scared, you try being in the streets of Manhattan by yourself at night.

It's scary-- with no place to live, it is (muted) up.

That was the lowest point.

I was embarrassed that I was living in the streets, and I, I knew rich people, but I wasn't gonna go ask them for money to help me out.

What was they gonna do, you know?

Say, "You can move in with me"?

I think I was homeless about four to five months.

I remember sleeping in abandoned cars.

And I remember spending, uh, all night in crack houses, just to have a place that was warm enough to stay inside.

I did a little crack.

I got introduced to getting high on crack with this guy that lived on Tenth Street.

And I didn't know he was a crackhead.

I didn't even know what crack was.

He said, "Well, try a hit, try it."

And so I took a hit of it.

I said, "That's pretty interesting stuff."

And I didn't feel any different when I was high, other than the fact that I could escape being lonely, and I could focus on the people that were getting high.

There were some very strange people getting high.

But when you're not high, you know, you're by yourself all the time sitting on a park bench, and that's bull(muted).

I said, "This (muted) ain't for me-- I'm getting outta this."

So I just quit, never touched it again.

Well, I knew I had to paint.

And I couldn't paint if I was gonna continue to do this.

I've painted the entire time, all my life.

I don't know one year I didn't paint.

But I've never been aggressive about going into galleries saying, "You want to show me?

You want to do this?"

I can't kiss (muted), I can't be in someone's face all the time.

So, therefore, I'm not looked at as being someone important.

After Emmerich, I did several shows with John Hersey and shows with somebody else.

One show where the guy claims that he didn't sell any paintings, so he burned them all.

RAPPAPORT: Burned your paintings?

- Yeah, he burned all of them, 'cause he didn't sell them.

I went to some gallery in New York City and showed them what I did, and, uh, the woman almost laughed at me.

She almost laughed in my face.

"Ha, ha"-- "Okay, fine, see you later."

So I just decided to stay away from galleries and stay away from people that didn't like Black people, one way or the other, and got the hell out of there.

So I came here, and I got space to walk around in.

I bought a container, I could paint there.

That was the only way I could see it go on.

(file scraping) It's a hood mount from a Rocket 88 Oldsmobile.

Supposedly the Oldsmobile belonged to Clifford Brown.

Back in the day, the people that had a nightclub asked my mother for some money, 'cause they wanted to bring this great trumpet player to Pittsburgh.

And he left Pittsburgh and was driving a brand-new Rocket 88 Oldsmobile.

And he let the girl that he brought with him drive it, and of course, she killed all of them.

My mother said, "I gave you some money to bring him here.

"And he was going back to New York City, "and I didn't get a dime out of it.

And my son wants the, the hood mount off his car."

I like it, always liked it.

Of course, I liked airplanes, you know?

It knocks me out that you can get in something and go up in the air, and then you can look down.

Once you look down, you can see this, maybe.

I get the feeling of flying over top of some of these things, you know what I'm saying?

When you see them from the top, looking down on them like this here, I have strange fantasies.

I have fantasies that, that, uh, one of these days, we're gonna go outside and someone's gonna walk out of some kind of ship and say, "Well, they're all dead-- we killed them all.

This planet's ours now."

And this feels the same kind of way of looking down at something that's... You don't know what's there, but you're looking down on it.

It's a strange feeling, it really is.

It's, it's hard to tell what you're looking at.

You're looking at another world in itself.

That can be deep space, that can be anywhere in the universe.

And you can do it with paint.

Everyone wants to go to another world.

I'd like to be the first Black person to go to deep space.

I can't wait till they find an intelligent source in deep space.

They're gonna find it sooner or later, if they haven't found it already and not telling us.

There's somebody out there that's smarter than us.

(chuckling): Believe me.

ANNOUNCER (on television): FTS is armed for launch.

BRADLEY: They're getting ready to go.

You know, I want them to go to a planet, and everyone walks out the door on the planet, and they're all Black.

It's, ends the bull(muted).

WOMAN (on television): Ignition-- liftoff.

BRADLEY: It's gone.

Oh, boy, I should be flying that.

We're going 29,000 miles an hour.

Oh, (muted).

The fuel tank is empty.

It's a strange machine to fly, I'll tell you that.

(chuckles) Kids would like to sit in it and play with it, I think.

If I was a kid, I'd do it.

I mean, I don't know about other kids.

(switch clicks) Safety switch is on.

It takes a lot to-- put some oil on this to get it to fly, I think.

Some 3-in-One oil, I bet you all this stuff works.

You'll see.

I paint and I make sculpture at the same time.

It's just a matter of putting things together that feel right.

It, it gives you a, a reason to stay alive, to wake up every morning to do that.

'Cause otherwise, if you wake up, what the (muted) do you do, cut grass?

I can't wait to wake up, because in the morning, I wake up, and, bang, all of a sudden, I see all this color around me.

It's a great life I live-- I think it's terrific.

I mean, I wouldn't exchange it for anything in the world.

But my mom predicted it, you know?

She said, "You got a great life and a great career.

Stay with it."

I wish she was alive and seeing what I'm doing now.

Watch this.

This is off of a famous submarine.

Experimenting is fun.

It really is.

I like it.

I like that, too.

I could put some musical notes in that.

Right here-- one, two, three lines.

You could put B-flat, f minor.

That's a B-flat there.

(chuckling): That's an f minor.

Little tiny things, we don't know what they are, what notes they are.

(birds chirping) He's singing the song to it.

He's in c minor.

He'll do it again.

(bird chirping) The bird!

He's in c minor.

He's not in F, he's not in G, he's a C. (vocalizing) That's c minor.

You know?

(bird chirping) (Bradley vocalizing) When I was a kid, if someone 80 years old, my God, that was the end of their life-- they were gone.

But mine's just starting at 80.

Nothing stops me.

What do you think?

This looks right now.

It's getting there.

I think I've been one of the luckiest people who ever lived.

I was lucky enough to be adopted by who adopted me.

And I was lucky enough to marry three beautiful women that liked me better than I liked myself.

Well, that's not true, but it's... (chuckles): I like myself just fine.

This is a self-portrait.

I like that drawing.

That's another self-portrait-- I like this one, too.

Kind of strange to see it, but I know it's me.

And Debra says that I painted these in the apartment in Manhattan.

I don't know, I don't-- you know.

As you know, my memory's bad.

About the past.

And it's funny, 'cause I didn't know my memory was getting this bad until certain things would happen.

And Debra'd say, "You just asked that question, Peter."

And I'd get in a big argument with her, "I did not!"

And then someone else would say, "Peter, you just said so."

That's to say, I'm losing my memory.

That was really hard to figure out.

But I don't care one day to the next, as long as I can get up and do what I have to do.

I can be like most artists and never get in a, not have no conversation at all, just sit and look at you.

Most of 'em don't talk about anything.

The ones that are successful never say a word.

The less I remember, the more I can paint.

(laughs): Yes?

I don't have to talk to anyone, I can just paint.

This might be the last interview I ever do.

I think it might be.

That's why it's so good.

You're making it good.

Because I don't think I'm gonna talk to anyone else anymore.

It's coming up.

(exhales) Huh.

Who would paint something like that?

I like it.

I like the painting.

Do you?

I want to see how many things I can paint while I'm alive.

I really got to kick (muted) today, tomorrow, and when you leave, I'm going back to work, that's it.

I don't think we should have so many beer cans in the film, do you think?

RAPPAPORT: Probably not.

- But (muted) 'em, they didn't pay for it, so they can kiss my Black ass.