Look at This Picture Closely. Now Close Your Eyes. S

Romare Bearden

Look at this picture closely. Now close your eyes. s

1. What do you remember?

2. What features stand out?

3. Who are these people?

4. Where are they?

5. What time of day is it?

6. What sounds can you imagine as part of this picture?

7. What title would you give this work of art?

8. The word serenade means a song played to a sweetheart at night. Why do you think the artist calls this collage Serenade?

Romare (rõm-er-y) Bearden was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1912. When the family moved the New York, both parents were part of the group that formed the Harlem Renaissance. In the early 1940s Bearden met the artist Stuart Davis, who shared his love of jazz. Bearden felt he lived in two worlds, that of the white, artistic avant-garde and that of the black, uptown culture of Harlem. Throughout his life he felt a strong desire to engage in social issues. Bearden was a philosopher, poet, musician (collaborating with Dizzy Gillespie), and visual artist, best known for his collage pieces. He did not consider himself an African-American artist, but, simply, an artist. He died in 1988. Serenade, 1969, is one of at least four works by Bearden using the word "serenade" in its title. 9. The artist once described his work as "putting something over something else." The word collage comes from a French word meaning to paste or glue. What materials (media) did Bearden use to create this collage? 10. What kinds of lines do you notice in this work of art? 11. How does this irregularity make you feel? 12. What are the shapes? spaces? creating by the overlapping papers? 13. How did the size (distortion) of some of the pieces affect what you remembered about the picture when you closed your eyes? 14. Bearden was influenced by the jazz he heard. Both collage and jazz change the rhythm of the line and work outside the usual frame. There is not a right way to make jazz or a collage. Jazz has a syncopated rhythm-like a heartbeat. What is syncopated about this piece? 15. Both collage and jazz disrupt the rhythm of the musical or visual line. How are the lines disrupted or broken in this piece? 16. Both jazz and collage are considered improvisation, created spontaneously, on the spur of the moment, and noticeably by an individual or a group of individual performers, unlike an orchestra in which no individual performer stands out. How is the viewer aware of the hand of the artist? (How is this not like a realistic photograph?)

17. What seems spontaneous about this picture? How does it seem like the shifting patterns of a kaleidoscope? 18. Notice how the artist has depicted parts of the people and the furniture from different angles. Discuss how this Cubist technique forces you to look at the figures in a new way. 19. Jazz is a "present-tense" music. What about Serenade makes it seem more "What's happening" than "What happened"? 20. Write your personal reaction to this work of art: When I see…. I think, I feel, I wonder.