A brush with… Julie Mehretu, a podcast by The Art Newspaper

A brush with…, sponsored by Cork Street Galleries, is an engaging podcast from The Art Newspaper

In the latest round of exclusive, in-depth conversations, host Ben Luke interviews four more leading artists about their life and work through their cultural experiences.

As her retrospective opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Ethiopian-born, New York-based artist Julie Mehretu begins the series 3 cycle, discussing the rich language she uses in her paintings, drawing on geopolitical subject matter but pushing towards abstraction.

Mehretu considers the influence of contemporary artists David Hammons, Kara Walker and Glenn Ligon, her collaboration with the British artist Tacita Dean, how Rembrandt made his mark on her as a child and the way she uses news photography as the basis for her most recent works.

Citing literary influences from Toni Morrison to Chris Abani, Mehretu reflects on the sounds in her life, from listening to Sun Ra and Joan Armatrading in her studio to collaborating with jazz pianist Jason Moran and the theatre and opera director Peter Sellars.

Plus there’s talk of the cultural experience that changed the way Mehretu sees the world, the one work of art she would choose to live with, and the posing of the ultimate question: what is art for?

You can listen to all A brush with… episodes and subscribe to the podcast here.