Art at Ray Together: Romare Bearden
We want to tell you about a wonderful African American artist named Romare Bearden. Here is a picture of him as a boy. Romare was born down in North Carolina and when he was about 3 years old, his parents moved north to New York City to a neighborhood called Harlem. All through his childhood, lots of interesting people came to his house, musicians; writers; and all sorts of artists. Growing up meeting all of these talented people gave Romare an appreciation for the arts.
Romare grew up in a very loving family. His mom was a journalist and his dad worked for the sanitation department in New York City. All of Romare's family and close friends called him Romie. Romie grew up liking many of the same things you and I like: baseball, reading, music, art, and animals. Romare had 4 cats, all named after famous people in history and art. Here are 2 pictures of Romare with 2 of his cats. One of his cats was named Tuttle after the pharaoh King Tut and the others were named Gypo, Mikie, and Rusty.
Romare Bearden was a very talented artist who liked to draw, paint, make cartoons, and write articles. He even designed music album covers. He is most famous for his work as a collage artist. These are some of the materials he might have used to make his pictures. He would use masonite as the backing, glue, and all sorts of materials like these to make one big picture. He used a brayer to roll the paper flat like this. Then sometimes he might add paint or pen to shade or make more details.
Romare lived in 5 places: North Carolina where he was born, Harlem in New York City where he spent most of his childhood, Pittsburgh and Baltimore where he spent his summers with his grandparents, and the Caribbean where he spent his last few years of life . Romare used memories from his life as inspiration for his art.
 Three Folk Musicians |
Let's look at one of his collages called "Three Folk Musicians." Often, Romare would use memories from his childhood as the subject for his artwork. I want to tell you a true story that was the inspiration for this collage. When Romare was a boy, he spent some time in the country near Baltimore, Maryland with one of his grandmothers named Cattie. One of Cattie's neighbors was Mrs. Johnson. Mrs. Johnson liked to bake a special cake that looked just like a watermelon. It had swirls of red batter, seeds made of chocolate chips, and green striped icing. Lots of people liked to buy her cakes. Every Saturday of that summer, Romie filled his wagon with freshly baked cakes to deliver house to house to the wealthy people in town. Mrs. Johnson's husband, a blind folk singer, would walk with Romie, strumming his guitar with one hand and holding Romie's with the other. One afternoon, they stopped by the side of the road so Romie could fill his pail with blackberries to bring back to Mrs. Johnson. Romie loved hearing Mr. Johnson make up his own music. Mr. Johnson used to say that his sounds came from the wind moving through his fingers on the strings. When we looked at "Three Folk Musicians" we can see guitar and banjo players strumming their folksy blues, recreating the days when young Romie wandered through the country fields listening to Mr. Johnson's music and picking ripe berries. |
 Summertime |
Romie loved to look out his studio window and see what was happening out on the street. Romie's art celebrated the every day life of African Americans, both their joys and their struggles. This collage is called "Summertime." How many faces do you see? Some are faces with lots of details and some parts are blank. What do you think is happening up here? These two people are peeking out their windows to watch the summer street scene below. They look a little bit like they are spying. Romare loved to show what was happening on the street and inside the city buildings at the same time. As we look at his collage we can make up a story of what might have been happening on that city block one summer evening. What is the woman in the middle doing? She looks like she's enjoying an ice cream cone. Did you notice that he used a picture of a rose for the ice cream and a triangle shaped paper for the ice cream cone? Behind her is the kind of iron railing that you would see in New York City. What is the gentleman doing next to her? |
 Return of the Prodigal Son |
For this collage Romare used painted pieces of paper and magazine cut outs. The title is Return of the Prodigal Son. How many people do you see? Does anyone see a bottle? Does anyone see a flickering lamp? Does anyone see a sun? Does anyone see a necklace? Let's look at the hands for a minute. Some are detailed and small and some are overly large, some small, and here is one that has no details but we know it is a hand because of its shape. He changed the eye sizes also. When the shapes and sizes are not realistic and don't seem to be the right size, we call this distortion. |
 She-Ba |
We know that Romare was an African American and we know that it was important to Romare that he make pictures about African Americans and Africans both in times of struggle and in times of success and joy. Romare was making a lot of his work during the Civil Rights era in the 1960s. This is a time in our country when people like Martin Luther King worked hard to show us that we need to stop discriminating, or treating people differently, because of their race or their religion. Let's look at this picture called "She-Ba" How many people do you see in this picture? Two- the middle figure here and someone off to the left. There are some clues in this collage that tell us the person in the middle is very important. Can you guess what they might be? What is she holding? It is called a crook or a staff. Is this figure a woman or a man? Can you see her skirt? She looks like she may be seated. Do you see her feet with sandal straps? What does the man behind her doing? He is probably holding a small umbrella to keep her shaded from the sun. I mentioned the title is called "She-Ba." We know that Sheba was an ancient queen of a part of Africa we now call Ethiopia. She was a very powerful and rich queen. |
|
Let's show these two pictures together since they depict the same theme, music. We know that Romare loved jazz music and he went to nightclubs often. In his own work, Romare used a technique jazz musicians use called improvisation. When a musician improvises he or she makes up the music in the moment. The music is unrehearsed and unplanned. In Romie's art, this meant he would start with a basic idea –like here in Showtime there is the theme of a woman singing accompanied by two trumpet players- but then Romie starts cutting and pasting and trying out different solutions. So the end result, the picture, may turn out in a way he did not plan. Romie used to say that the picture would lead him to an unexpected place. We do this all the time in art class. When we look at these two collages we can almost tap in rhythm to the music there is so much energy. She looks like she is in the middle of singing with her mouth open, they have their trumpets raised triumphantly and these guys in "Jammin at the Savoy" are hunched over playing intensely. Romare has really captured the essence of the music. |
|
Remember that Romie liked to make pictures about his childhood? Any ideas of what this oil painting with collage could be called? It is entitled "The Piano Lesson." Romare overlapped painted rectangles of blue, red and orange and it makes the room look flat. Which one is the teacher and which is the student? How can you tell? Romare pasted down bits of cloth, wood, and advertising pictures from an old catalogue to decorate this old-fashioned Southern parlor. |
 Quilting Time |
In real life, this work, called "Quilting Time," is a 16 foot long mosaic made out of hundreds of pieces of small glass held together by grout like the tiles in your bathroom, only these tiles are tiny like your fingernails. Have you ever seen a quilt? Quilts are made of lots of small pieces of fabric sewn together to make one large picture or one large design. Doesn't that sound a little bit like a collage? When Romare made this mosaic, he was remembering all the women he used to see gathered around in circles working on quilts together, sharing stories and news of their families. |
In so much of Romare's work, he would begin with a small idea, start painting and cutting and see where his ideas would take him. By the time he built up his quilt of paint and paper shapes, a whole new scene or story might come out. In every painting, he said, the artist must find something to set him free. He died at the age of 76 from cancer. In his work and in his life, Romare Bearden celebrated the human spirit and he gave his special world to all of us.