“For me, it’s always a detail—a detail that points to a larger thing,” says the abstract artist Mark Bradford. “I start to imagine what it points to, and that’s when my imagination really goes.” The detail here is end papers—the small translucent paper rectangles that Bradford learned to use while working in his mother’s beauty salon. Later, by layering end papers into his paintings, he created a new sense of space, rhythm, and autobiographical subtext, pointing the way to a powerful minimalism. —E.C.