“I suggest that Western society, and particularly that of America is gravely ill and a major symptom is the American treatment of the Negro. The artistic expression of this culture concentrates on themes of “absurdity” and “anti-art” which provide further evidence of its ill health. It is the right of everyone now to re-examine history to see if Western Culture offers the only solutions to man’s purpose on this earth.” – Romare Bearden
The exhibition titled History of the Black American Experience is showcasing artwork by Romare Bearden. Although, you cannot sum up the history of African Americans in one artist, I feel that the stories told from the three pieces in this exhibition is or can be representative of a great number of African American who followed the great migration from south to north, incorporating music as a backdrop. “Bearden’s art transcends categories because it joins the imagery of black life and circumstance to universally understood experience. This is the essence of Bearden’s contribution.” Bearden’s art reflects a collective memory of a new black aesthetic.
Romare Bearden an artist born into the American south and moved to New York with his family when he was around four years old his art reflects both regions with also a global philosophies of the Berlin dada movement. Bearden is most known for his collage and photomontage which are techniques of the dada movement in which he adds traditional West and Central motifs, combined with the African American aesthetics and motifs. Bearden renders his art with the esteem and pride of the New Negro Movement “Bearden works indicate the complexity of defining a black identity in art during an era when racial tensions were exploding in the United States”.
In Bearden’s lifetime he had seen many changes and movement within the African-American societies, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement with these movement artistic movements like the New Negro, Harlem Renaissance as well as the Black Arts Movement where he was exposed to strong ideologies of theories of great leaders and thinkers of the Black community as well as performers and musicians, including members of the formerly Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project, whose inspiration can also be seen in his works. Some of the great minds he was exposed to as he himself were coming of age were; A. Philip Randolph, Claude McKay, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Stuart Davis ,Duke Ellington, Jacob Lawrence, Albert Murray, Barry Stavis, Countee Cullen, W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Paul Roberson, Thomas “Fats” Waller and did a drawing for Richard Wright. Bearden was also an incredible writer of Art History and of songs in which he lean his talents to the works of Billy Eckstine and Billy Holiday. Ralph Ellison said of Bearden’s work that there were similarities between jazz and surrealism, “the sharp breaks, leaps in consciousness, distortions, paradoxes, reversals, telescoping of time and surreal blending of styles, value, hopes and dreams that characterize much of Negro American History.”
Around the 1960s Bearden being a strong thinker as well as artist, spawned the Spiral Group with fellow artist Norman Lewis and Hale Woodruff(which were the older members and leaders of the group other members were; Charles Alston, James Yeargans, Felrath Hines, Richard Mayhew, William Pritchard, Emma Amos, Reginald Gammon, Alvin Hillingsworth, Calvin Douglass, Perry Ferguson, William Majors, Earl Miller, and Merton Simpsonin which they were to “establish collective visions, examine their cultural identity, and explore the possibility of defining a black aesthetic.” This vision can be captured in a quote by Bearden stating; “The Negro artist must come to think of himself not primarily as a Negro artist, but as an artist…There is only one art…and it belongs to all mankind…Examine the art forms of any culture and one become aware of the patterns that link it to other cultures and people.”
In Experience vs. Theory: Romare Bearden and Abstract Expressionism it says, “Bearden's collages and photostats of the mid-1 960s onwards bear fundamental resemblances to his abstract and semi-abstract works of the previous years; more importantly, they reveal an attitude towards Abstract Expressionism which has great relevance to the movement's methods and aims.” Bearden also experimented with abstract expressionism which leads him into a fascination with cubism studying the planar spaces and linear exaggeration of figures similar to Picasso. In a 1934 article, Bearden made known his opposition to the efforts of institutional patrons of black art, such as the Harmon Foundation, to limit blacks to depicting their "ethnic richness" in order to convince white viewers of their cultural integrity. Black artists of the day, he felt, were "at best hackneyed and uninspired." "They have looked at nothing with their own eyes. . . . they have evolved nothing original or native like the spiritual, or jazz music" In the height of his career he began this deconstruction, fragmentation and improvisation around the Black Arts Movement, which Bearden works and that of his disbanded group of not expressing the violence and death of the time. If not portraying the violent times and situation of the African-American what he did with his artwork by rejecting the traditional Eurocentric idea of beauty, creating a new aesthetics based on African figural sculpture to tie a union to the motherland.
The artworks that I’m closely distant to are the photomontage most closely to cubism incorporating urban and rural black communities, fused with family and musical motifs. Whereas much of the artwork in cubism has been compared to child-like images Bearden brings sophisticated lines with realistic images. He rarely made preliminary sketches for his artwork, preferring to improvise as he arranged his colored shapes: “You have to begin somewhere,” he said, “so you put something down. Then you put something else with it, and then you see how that works, and maybe you try something else and so on, and the picture grows in that way. One thing leads to another, and you take the options as they come.” The second piece of art is called Card Players, 1982, collage of printed and painted papers with paint, ink, and graphite. Card parties were adopted from the days beyond slavery from European to American slave owners that really took shape in the Louisiana red-light district that made its way into a tradition in the urban cities. After dark celebration of both men and women but first taking to the men folk, Bearden gives this tradition flavor with the blueman (the blues music) in servitude dressings, the men still in hats with a lamplight and fireplace near-by depicts a modest household, the lines are hard and the colors dark seem more abstract than cubism. With most of Bearden’s southern themes, he “used collage, to literally piece together his memories of the past.” Also with most of his works with collages he exaggerates parts of the body normally the head which is a technique taught to him by George Grosz who in his own works portrayed provocative visual satires and he encouraged Bearden to look at how Europeans portrayed pain and suffering from political wars and opposition movement, which Bearden use as a sort-of in your face which puts the heads in the “seat of power”, it is the body part that identifies a human being and it is the location where spiritual connections occur.
Tomorrow I May Be Far Away, 1967 (1966), collage of printed and painted papers with charcoal, graphite, and crayon depicts a rural family dad on porch, child in window and mother in the garden the faces and images as well as the surrounding areas are made up of cubes. In The Art of Romare Bearden A Resource for Teachers it explains this Bearden piece in great detail;
for the seated figure’s face, Bearden used as many as fifteen different magazine cuttings. Because they came from many different sources, the scale, color, and points of view shift. The background is a wall from a shingled wooden shack or barn, reminiscent of buildings Bearden would have seen in Mecklenburg County. Windowscapes seem like pictures within pictures. Perhaps wrapping paper or wallpaper Hands are made from various magazine sources. Abrupt changes in color, size, and texture capture your attention, making the hands a focal point of the collage, Many cuttings are from magazines or catalogues of wood samples. No two pieces seem exactly alike, The train, one of several “journeying things,” recurs in Bearden’s work—a memory from the artist’s youth in rural North Carolina and a symbol of the Underground Railroad and the northern migration of African Americans from the South during the early part of the twentieth century. Bearden often worked in a variety of collage media and then added graphite, charcoal, spray paint, watercolor, oil, and more. This section was probably spray painted. A cabin in the woods—more Mecklenburg memories A lush landscape made from magazine cuttings Bearden studied art history, visited museums, and collected reproductions of famous works of art. This piece of collage is a cutting from a reproduction of Henri Rousseau’s painting, The Dream, 1910, in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Birds and barnyard fowl appear often. The female figure in profile holding a watermelon wears a traditional early twentieth-century farm costume with a long skirt and head scarf. The rustic wooden fence, a recurring farm motif, helps.
There are other of his pieces that are totally musically filled depicting jazz and blues on stage, at their instruments, like in his art work The Blues, 1974, collage of printed and painted papers with paint, ink, and graphite in which his technique was painting and layering paper (8, 9) in which he tore away always upward and or across where he would sometime fill with paint or a piece of printed paper. The Blues decked out with all the emotion even down to the tones of warm colors that bring all the joy and all the melancholy out of jazz and blues scenes. I believe the woman in this works is Billy Holiday although there’s one portraying Bessie Smith who was considered to be the “Empress of the Blues”, which is what the title of the artwork is called. The painting The Blues has Billie on stage (or Billie like due to the flower in her hair) almost surrounded by her fellow musicians, sheet music and a cluster of black men like you would see in an open jazz session.
Romare Bearden a preeminent artist who life and works reflect a time when the creation of a black aesthetics was fueled and needed. His work were diverse showing his knowledge of the art world, worldwide, his works include collage and photomontage, water color, oil and monotype, he had experience with being a cartoonist a song writer and a published writer of text on art and history. He is one of my favorite persons of art and his influences stemmed from dada, surrealism, cubist and abstract art with a certain concentration of African figures and sculptures and his artwork reflects this.
Bibliography
Amaki, Amalia K., Rutgers, New Brunswick, New Jersey, London,. 2004 Print.
Bearden, Romare. Artist's journal. Rpt. "Romare Bearden: Origins and Progressions."
Detroit Institute of Art, 16 Sept.-16 Nov. 1986. New York: Signet Printing, 1986. Journal excerpts run from Sept. 1947 to undated entries in 1949.
"The Negro Artist and Modern Art." Journal of Negro Life Dec. 1934: 371-12.
Murray, Albert. “The Visual Equivalent of the Blues,” in Romare Bearden: 1970-1980,
ed. Jerald L. Melberg and Milton J. Bloch (Charlotte, North Carolina: Mint Museum Department of Art, 1980), 17-18.
Witkovsky, Matthew S. Experience vs. Theory: Romare Bearden and Abstract
Expressionism Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 23, No. 2, Fiction Issue. (Summer, 1989), pp. 257-282
The Art of Romare Bearden A Resource for Teachers https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/Education/learning-resources/teaching-packets/pdfs/bearden-tchpk.pdf Web
Card Players 1982
The Blues 1974
Tomorrow I May Be Far Away, 1967
Amaki, Amalia K., A Century of African American Art pg. 17
Witkovsky, Matthew S. Experience vs. Theory: Romare Bearden and Abstract
At times your article is a bit too scholarly to the point of esoteric rather than revealing. And, in quite a few places I noted that it needed editing for a few word changes. It is Paul Robeson that is a famous singer and actor, not Paul Robertson. Adding the simple birth and death dates of Bearden would be helpful when trying to understand when he was in influence in African-American art.
Ron