Copyright, 1994, Art Outreach, an extension of the Education Department and School of Art, Springfield Art Association of Edwards Place, an Illinois non-profit corporation.
#53 ROMARE BEARDEN AND WILLIAM H. JOHNSON Images Artists #1 “Jamming At the Savoy” Bearden #2 “The Return of Maudelle Sleet” Bearden #3 “Return of the Prodigal Son” Bearden #4 “The Lamp” Bearden #5 “Out Chorus” Bearden #6 “Man in a Vest” Johnson #7 “Going to Church” Johnson #8 “Mom and Dad” Johnson
Introduction to Romare Bearden
“He struck me as taller somehow and even more substantial than his 5”11”, 210 pound frame would warrant, smiling with a gaze in his hazel green eyes that was at the same time congenial, approachable, yet detached and distant--and there was a decidedly special aura about him. Although Bearden was a remarkably fair-skinned black American, he was also what Albert Murray had called an Omni-American--part frontiersman, part Cherokee, part Southerner, part urbane Harlemite, and part blues-idiom hero. He was a man whose presence charged a room with intelligence, not that he ever put on any airs: he had no need to.” Quote by Myron Schwartzman, author.
Right now, it is almost impossible to go into a bookstore and not come across a book with Romare Bearden’s art on its cover. We make two assumptions when encountering this phenomenon: that the contents of the book have something to do with the “black experience”: and that the publisher wants to be absolutely sure we know this. These assumptions expose an underlying problem in the literature on Bearden: the common reduction of his work to just a record of the black experience.
#1 “Jamming at the Savoy” by Bearden 1980-1981
Romare Bearden was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1912. His family migrated north, spending time in Pittsburgh and Harlem. By the 1920s, the Bearden home was a gathering place for many literary and artistic figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Bearden studied at Boston University while playing baseball for the Negro League and then received a BS in mathematics from New York University. He was also a New York Department Social Services caseworker. Bearden served in the US Army from 1942 to 1945.
Tell the student about the Savoy Ballroom, which was one of the country’s great dance palaces at a time when jazz and dance combined. The floor was always filled with dancers. They stomped at the Savoy every night of the week, two bands alternating on opposite sides of the dance floor. The greatest bands in the country played there. Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey all brought their bands to the Savoy throughout the 1930’s. The young singer at the Savoy was Ella Fitzgerald. Bearden had an eye and an ear on which little was lost. Thirty years later, it would all come back in hundreds of works--collages, monoprints, murals, and mosaics--filled with his memories of music.
From Bearden’s quote we gain insight into his highly individual style. “You must become a blues singer--only you sing on the canvas.” Can you hear the music of the canvas? Note how most of the musicians are in profile (side #53 ROMARE BEARDEN AND WILLIAM H. JOHNSON, 1 views).
• Why are diagonal lines used in this work? Where are they used? Diagonals create a sense of movement or action. Where are the diagonal lines used? All of the musical instruments are on diagonals, even the lid of the piano.
• How are colors used in this work? Do they draw your eye to a certain object? Do they make you feel a certain way? Color establishes mood. Blue tones or cool colors may make the viewer calm, sad or relaxed, while bright, warm colors such as yellow, red, or orange may make a person feel happy or excited. Emphasize how color creates excitement.
#2 “The Return of Maudelle Sleet” by Bearden
Romare Bearden said “My roots are in North Carolina. I paint what people did when I was a little boy.”
This work is called a collage. Explain that a collage combines fragments of cut photographs, cloth, torn and cut paper which has been painted and mounted on canvas. Bearden usually draws the composition in charcoal first. Where are the photographs? To physically capture the memory, her blouse, straw hat, arms and many of the flowers are photos.
• What can you tell about Maudelle Steel? She loves flowers and seems to be growing from the garden herself. Much of the print uses a monochromatic color scheme: various shades and tints of one color are used. What is that color? Maybe Bearden uses green to emphasize Sleet’s love for flowers.
• What type of painting is this? Is it important that only one person is represented? What does this tell you about they type of work it is? This type of painting is called a portrait. A portrait is a painting of a person or a group of people to record how they look.
#3 “Return of the Prodigal Son” by Bearden 1964
In the sweltering summer of 1963, as 200,000 people marched on Washington, D.C., to proclaim their civil rights, the art of Romare Bearden came of age. Black-and-white images of the march flashed across television screens and throughout newspapers: the force of the day, poised on the brink of history.
Bearden created a new twentieth-century art form--the photomontage. It allowed his concerns for justice and civil rights to be expressed with dignity and power. These works provide a rare historical framework for understanding artists who choose to portray the compelling issues of their times, which included Viet Nam, protests, city life, and religious rituals.
The photomontage uses old catalogs, photographs and magazines; movement is created by distortions of scale and angles. One patch of paper is placed oddly next to another. A face in unbelievably larger than the hands that go with it; an eye can be almost as big as a head.
• How many people are depicted? What in the photomontage gives you clues about the character of #53 ROMARE BEARDEN AND WILLIAM H. JOHNSON, 2
the people? Of the 3 people, examine the different kinds of hands and various shoes. Which figure is the mother? The right figure is probably the mother because of the white round kitchen table, set with a fork, spoon, salt shaker and candle, behind her. The male occupies the left side of the canvas with a rope textured bottle beside him. The son stands facing his mother, yet his head looks directly at the father.
• What do you think the blue square represents? Why? The upper blue square on the left could symbolize a window, the middle square over the boy’s head could represent a cabinet filled with jars or another window looking out. In actual size, Bearden’s photomontages were 3x4 feet or smaller in size.
#4 “The Lamp” by Bearden
By the early 1970’s, Bearden had become a presence in New York, and increasingly in the national art scene. In June 1970, Bearden received a Guggenheim Foundation grant to write a book on the history of Afro-American art. By his death, he had published 3 books on this subject. Interestingly, they were used to write this portfolio.
By 1976, and at the height of his creative energies, Bearden began the long, mental return to his ancestral heritage in both his life and art (African-American, Cherokee Indian, Southern, Afro-Mediterranean, and Afro-Caribbean). A year after the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, purchased one of his outstanding collages, Bearden was invited home to give a talk in conjunction with the installation. Bearden recalled being taken by his great- grandmother, along dirt roads, to see the reservation where the Cherokee still lived. He remembered cotton fields, baptism, and the pride of tradition. Bearden would continue to explore and refine throughout the rest of his career: the city, religion and ritual, and the South. His treatment of these themes was personal, local, rooted in community. He sought to capture black culture in a visual mode.
• What is the theme of this print? What is the focal point, where do our eyes go first? • What clue does the viewer have that tells us it happened a long time ago? The picture shows a kerosene lamp instead of electricity. • Where is the circular composition? The viewer begins at the mother’s head and follows her vision to the book, then from her hands to the elbow, up the sleeve and back to her head, where the path begins again. • Notice the flat, colored shapes with no shading. When something is repeated with sufficient regularity, pattern is created. Where is the pattern?
#5 “Out Chorus” by Bearden
One of America’s finest artists, Bearden, studied from classical to surrealism in Paris and New York. He befriended some of the most prominent writers, painters and intellectuals of the day.
Bearden looked to Western and African iconography, but frequently referred to classical Chinese painting as a philosophical base for his compositional format. Bearden also learned about the “open corner” of Chinese landscape painting. Usually the right-hand corner acts as an entrance way for the viewer.
• Is this “open corner” effective here? Does your eye bring you into the painting through the upper right hand corner of the work? The viewer comes into the painting through the plain blue vertical strip in the upper right corner.
• How does the work combine opposites? The dense, crowded, vibrant activity of the band in the lower foreground in countered by the open space at the top of the canvas.
#53 ROMARE BEARDEN AND WILLIAM H. JOHNSON, 3
• Does this work repeat forms or shapes? Are there certain patterns in the work that are noticeable? The five musicians on the left have almost the same size and shape as if they came from the same cut-out. In this work, what reminds us of a comic book or newspaper? The pattern of dots and lines contained in the yellow background.
A Final Tribute
“Golden Dawn” a piece by Bearden hung in President Kennedy’s pre-inaugural suite. His secretary of State, Dean Rush, also collected Romare Bearden works of art. In addition to many honorary doctorates from universities, Bearden received the National Medal of the Arts from President Ronald Reagan. Romare Bearden died on March 12, 1988.
“I never had the privilege of meeting Romare Bearden. Once I stood outside 357 Canal Street in silent homage, daring myself to knock on his door. I am sorry I didn’t...I have often thought of what I would have said to him that day if I had knocked on his door and he had answered. I probably would just have looked at him. I would have looked, and if I were wearing a hat, I would have taken it off in tribute.”
August Wilson Saint Paul, MN
Introduction to William H. Johnson
Sometime in 1918, seventeen-year-old William Henry Johnson, determined to be an artist, arrived in New York from a small South Carolina town. He loaded ships with war supplies for what seemed enormous pay. To help his mother feed his brothers, sisters, and disabled father. Johnson lived in cold cheap rooms and worked nights too-- washing dishes, toting bags, cooking and doing odd jobs. After three years he had saved enough to start the five- year painting course at the National Academy of Design. Thus Johnson began a career marked by great promise yet was later shattered by tragedy.
#6 “Man in a Vest” by Johnson 1939-1940
Johnson felt his chances of success in the United States were limited by racial prejudice so he moved to Paris in 1926. There he married Holca Krake, a Danish weaver and settled in Denmark.
It is important to note that current events and world affairs influenced where and what an artist paints. When the Nazis occupied the Rhineland without opposition in 1936, Johnson concluded that Europe, once his haven from racism, was not longer safe for a modern black artist. He observed Hitler’s hatred and racist attacks on the Jews and on modern art. As an African-American and a modern artist, Johnson felt himself in double jeopardy and returned to the U.S. Thereafter, Johnson concentrated on aspects of African-American life.
• What type of painting is this? Does this painting show contrast? If so, what techniques are used? This is a strong portrait of a man in maybe his Sunday best. It illustrates a high degree of difference between colors.
#7 “Going to Church” by Johnson 1940-1941 #53 ROMARE BEARDEN AND WILLIAM H. JOHNSON, 4
Summoning up his own childhood memories of biblical tales and churchgoing, he saw the role religion played in African-American life. Johnson began to recognize the calmness and acceptance with which his people approached problems.
• Like the previous painting, this one is also composed with heavy, black outlines. What do these suggest? • Does this painting have balance? If so, why do you think he chose to use this technique in the painting? Would it give the painting a different feeling if the painting were unbalanced? If this painting were folded down the middle, the cow would balance the two men at the rear of the wagon and the church in the upper left would balance the building in the upper right corner.
#8 “Mom and Dad” by Johnson
Tragically, Johnson was suffering from increasingly severe mental deterioration. He went to Europe but was found wandering in the streets. Identified through the Traveler’s Aid Society, he was returned to New York where he spent the rest of his life--twenty three years--in the state hospital. He was admitted on December 1, 1947. He did not recognize anyone and was unable to paint. He died on April 13, 1970.
His work was stored in a warehouse because no one then knew what the outcome of Johnson’s illness would be. For 20 some years the work gathered dust and the storage bills went unpaid. The warehouse then demanded that the bills be paid or the work would be thrown out as garbage. The National Museum of American Art now has the 1,100 pieces of his work. What Johnson might have been if he had not been struck down in his prime will remain unknown.
Bibliography
1. Gelburd, Gail. Romare Bearden in Black and White, 709.2, B38g, 1997
2. Romare Bearden: Visual Jazz, 709.2(video) B38lr
3. Schwartzman, Myron. Romare Bearden: His Life and Art, 709.2, B38, 1990
4. Six Black Masters of American Art, 709.22, B38s
This portfolio was researched and written by Roanna Victor. Additional information may found at the Michael Victor II Art Library.
#53 ROMARE BEARDEN AND WILLIAM H. JOHNSON, 5