The Art of Romare Bearden

A Resource for Teachers

The Art of Romare Bearden was organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The exhibition was made possible with generous support from AT&T and was sponsored in part by Chevy Chase Bank.

The exhibition traveled to the following museums:

• National Gallery of Art, Washington, September 14, 2003 – January 4, 2004
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, February 7 – May 16, 2004
• Dallas Museum of Art, June 20 – September 12, 2004
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, October 14, 2004 – January 9, 2005
• High Museum of Art, Atlanta, January 29 – April 24, 2005

This packet was written and produced by staff of the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Writers: Carla Brenner, Heidi Hinish, and Barbara Moore, division of education. Photo research, gathering images, and getting permission to use them: Ira Bartfield and Sara Sanders-Buell, publications department, and Leo Kasun and Lesley Keiner, division of education. Online production: Stephanie Burnett and Rachel Richards, division of education.

Special thanks go to the many people who helped make this packet possible: Lynn Russell, chair of the division of education; Chris Vogel, production manager, publications department; Donna Mann, senior publications manager, education division; Phyllis Hecht, web manager; and the staff of the exhibition programs and photography departments. The education division especially thanks Mary Lee Corlett, research associate, and Ruth Fine, curator of the exhibition, for their help with this project.

Edited by Richard Carter. Designed by Studio A, Alexandria, Virginia.

Every effort has been made to find the copyright holders for the materials used in this book. Any mistakes will be fixed in later printings.

© 2003 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Cover: Tomorrow I May Be Far Away, 1966/1967, a collage (artwork made by gluing pieces of paper and other materials together) of various papers with charcoal and graphite on canvas, 46 x 56 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Paul Mellon Fund

Title page: Thank you...For F.U.M.L. (Funking Up My Life), detail, 1978, collage of various papers with ink and graphite on fiberboard, 15 x 18⅜ in. Donald Byrd

Back cover: The Street, 1964, collage of various papers on cardboard, 9⅝ x 11⅜ in. Milwaukee Art Museum, gift of Friends of Art and the African American Art Acquisition Fund

Except as otherwise noted, all works of art by Romare Bearden are © Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Objectives

The materials in this packet will help students learn the following about Romare Bearden:

• Bearden drew on his personal memories, African-American cultural history, and literature as subjects for his art. He connected scenes from African-American life to bigger, universal themes that all people can relate to.
• Bearden's artistic style was shaped by many influences, including Western European art, African sculpture, the work of fellow artists in America and Mexico, and music—especially blues and jazz.
• Bearden is best known for his collage work, which he used in new and creative ways. He also created paintings using watercolor, gouache (a type of opaque watercolor paint), and oil paint, as well as edition prints, monotypes (a printmaking technique that makes a single, one-of-a-kind print), murals, and one sculpture made from an assemblage of objects.
• Through his work in the arts community, Bearden supported and promoted artists of color.

How to Use This Packet

This packet includes slides, color reproductions (printed copies of the artwork), transparencies (images for overhead projectors), and a music CD. Some images appear in more than one format to give teachers flexibility.

• Slides follow the order in which they appear in the text.
• Transparencies match up with the activities.
• Color reproductions are meant for display in the classroom.
• The Branford Marsalis Quartet CD, Romare Bearden Revealed, pairs with the packet's section on music.

Table of Contents

6 — Bearden at a Glance

12 — Biography

• Activities: Scrutinize a Bearden; Write a Poem Inspired by Collage

22 — Memories

• North Carolina
• Pittsburgh
• Harlem
• Paris
• The Caribbean
• Activity: Make a Collage

32 — A Leader in the Arts Community

• Working in Black and White
• Activities: Organize an Exhibition; What's Your Cause?; Study Art Like Bearden

40 — Music

• Music as Subject
• Music and Aesthetic Choices (choices about style and beauty)
• Music and Life
• Activities: Draw to Music; Compare Poetry and Music

54 — Artistic and Literary Sources

• Borrowing and Mixing
• Changing
• Activity: Match Bearden's Works with Artistic Models

64 — Method

• Collage: Bearden's Signature Style
• Monotypes
• Activity: Make a Monotype

73 — Coda: Artist to Artist

74 — Slide List

76 — Reproduction List

77 — Transparency List

78 — Resource Finder

Bearden at a Glance

Meet Romare Bearden. He stood 5 feet 11 inches tall and had a solid, heavyset build. His friends called him Romie. After graduating from college, he worked as a social worker before becoming one of the most important artists in the United States, a status he held from the mid-1960s until his death in 1988.

"I think the artist has to be something like a whale, swimming with his mouth wide open, absorbing everything until he has what he really needs. When he finds that, he can start to make limitations. And then he really begins to grow."

Bearden grew up in a house where famous figures from the Harlem Renaissance—a flourishing of African-American art, music, and literature in the early 1900s—were regular visitors, including the poet Langston Hughes. So it's no surprise that as an adult, Bearden read constantly: poetry, philosophy, politics, books about myths, religion, and art, and ancient literature. He also read the work of contemporary writers and thinkers, many of whom were personal friends, including Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Albert Murray.

Bearden loved his cats: Gypo; Tuttle (short for the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen); Rusty (named after the Persian hero Rustum); and Mikie (short for the Renaissance artist Michelangelo).

Bearden's art doesn't fit into just one category because it connects images of Black life and experience to feelings and ideas that everyone can understand. This is the heart of what makes Bearden's contribution so important.

Bearden didn't just read—he also wrote. He wrote reviews of art exhibitions, articles about his own artistic methods and ideas, and three full-length books: The Painter's Mind (1953), Six Black Masters of American Art (1972), and A History of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Present (published in 1993, after his death).

Jazz and blues music gave Bearden many subjects for his art. Growing up, he listened to rural blues and uptown jazz—Duke Ellington's orchestra, Earl Hines on piano, Ella Fitzgerald's scat singing (a jazz vocal style using improvised sounds instead of words). For sixteen years, his art studio was located above the Apollo Theatre, which is still a famous music venue in Harlem today.

Bearden's signature technique was collage. He used small pieces cut from magazine photographs, painted paper, foil, posters, and reproductions of other artwork—these materials were like his "paints." His collages broke up space and form in surprising ways, leading one writer to call them "patchwork cubism" (cubism was an art movement that showed objects broken into geometric shapes and multiple angles at once).

The Places Bearden Painted

Rural North Carolina, where he was born and which he visited many times throughout his life.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a steel-industry town where he spent summers and one year of high school, and where he first felt inspired to draw.

Harlem, New York City, the center of Black culture in America, where his family moved when he was a toddler.

St. Martin, an island in the Caribbean where, later in life, he lived and worked for part of each year.

The Subjects Bearden Painted

• African-American life and traditions
• Stories from religion, history, literature, and myth
• Blues singers and jazz musicians

Bearden's Other Projects

• Illustrations for books
• Record album covers
• Stage sets and costumes
• Public murals

Bearden was dedicated to improving the treatment and recognition of African-American artists. While he criticized the idea of giving Black artists "special" or separate treatment, he was also very aware that they had fewer opportunities than white artists. Bearden took real, concrete action to help create more equal opportunities for Black artists.

"…we, as Negroes, could not fail to be touched by the outrage of segregation…" (from the catalogue of the first Spiral Group exhibition, 1965)

Bearden's Techniques

• Watercolor
• Gouache
• Collage
• Collage enlarged and reproduced in black and white using a photostat (an early photocopying process)
• Edition prints (multiple copies of a print made from the same design)
• Monotypes
• Oil paintings
• And one sculpture!

Be on the Lookout for These Recurring Images:

Trains • Spirit figures (conjurers, or people believed to have magical powers) • Rural shacks • Row houses and stoops • Large hands • Birds • Musicians • Windows • Hills • African sculpture • Smokestacks • Sun and moon • Cats • Roosters

Biography

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)

Romare Bearden was born in Charlotte, North Carolina—the main city of Mecklenburg County—on September 2, 1911. He grew up in a middle-class African-American family. His parents, Bessye and Howard, were both college-educated, and they expected Romare to succeed in life. Around 1914, his family joined the Great Migration, the large movement of Black Americans from the South to cities in the North and West. In the early 1900s, Jim Crow laws in the South prevented many Black citizens from voting and from having equal access to jobs, education, health care, land ownership, and more. Like many other Black families from the South, the Beardens settled in Harlem, a neighborhood in New York City. Romare would call New York home for the rest of his life.

In the 1920s, Harlem was a lively and important center of culture and ideas—it was the heart of African-American culture in America. Romare's mother became the New York editor of the Chicago Defender, a widely read African-American newspaper, and she became a well-known social and political figure in Harlem. Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, and other celebrated artists, writers, and musicians were frequent guests at the Bearden family home. These kinds of social and intellectual gatherings would remain a constant part of Romare's life. Meeting these legendary figures likely helped spark his lifelong love of jazz and literature.

"From far off some people that I have seen and remembered have come into the landscape…. Sometimes the mind relives things very clearly for us. Often you have no choice in dealing with this kind of sensation, things are just there…. There are roads out of the secret places within us along which we all must move as we go to touch others."

Throughout his childhood, Bearden spent time away from Harlem, staying most often with relatives in Mecklenburg County and