ROlllare Bearden at 100 by David Yezzi Little enough is certain about the painter Not surprising for an artist who employed Romare Bearden (I9II-88) that even the vibrant and evocative narrative elements in pronunciation of his name remains unclear. his paintings and collages, Bearden loved In taped interviews, Bearden pronounced it stories. Like a character from one of August RO-mer-ee, while his intimates simply called Wilson's plays (which his paintings helped him Romy.l Oddly, today Ro-MARE is what to inspire), he loved telling them-recount­ one hears most often, and even longtime ing them with relish, ebulliently. Bearden's friends have largely adopted this pronuncia­ particular brand of pictorial storytelling, the tion. (There are also discrepancies in the titles distinctive Cubist narrative style he devel­ of a number of his works, which appear one oped in his paintings and collages, is unique way here, another there.) Now a couple of in American art; it's also uniquely American. centenary events afford an opportunity to And though the story of his paintings ends know Bearden and his work a little better. A in Harlem - by way of Pittsburgh, North first-rate show of his signature collages, cur­ Carolina, and even Saint Martin in the Ca­ rently on view at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery ribbean- it begins way back with the ancient in New York, reveals the fme-grained nature Greeks and as far distant as Wang Wei's Chi­ of his art-the rubbed and scratched surfaces na and Manet's Paris. As his friend the pho­ and brilliant, aqueous hues not captured by tographer Frank Stewart said of Bearden's reproductions.2 The second is the publication wide knowledge of the history of painting, ofRomare Bearden: AmericanMndernist, a col­ "he knew from caveman on up." lection of fourteen essays originally given as Here's one of the stories that Bearden liked lectures in conjunction with the career retro­ to tell: It's 1950, and Bearden, then in his late spective "The Art of Romare Bearden," orga­ thirties, traveled to Paris on the GI Bill, os­ nized by the National Gallery ofArt in 200,.3 tensibly to study philosophy at the Sorbonne (which must have been tricky given his lim­ I An earlier version of this essay was given as a talk ited command of French). In fact, he had at the New York Studio School ofDrawing, Painting gone as a painter, with some early acclaim and and Sculpture in New York on November IO, 20IO. a few gallery shows already to his name. He 2 "Romare Bearden: Collage, A Centennial Celebra­ took with him letters of introduction from tion" opened at Michael Rosenfrld Gallery, New his dealer, the legendary Samuel Kootz, to York, on March 26 and remains on view through Picasso, Braque, Matisse, and Brancusi (with May 2I, 20II. whom he later shopped for groceries). While 3 Romare Bearden: AmericanModernist, edited by Ruth he made no paintings during his time in Paris, Fine and Jacquelin Francis; The National Gallery of his passionate immersion into the life of the Art, 296 pages, $70. city had a lasting effect in his work. 22 The New Criterion May 20n Romare Bearden at roo by David Yezzi According to one interview Bearden gave, Bearden carried his inheritance from Eu­ his first meeting with Matisse did not go as ropean painting and collage back with him he had hoped; Bearden made something of to the States (though in truth he'd pos­ a well-intentioned, and in retrospect rath­ sessed it for years) and made ofit something er hilarious, faux pas. Having understood personal and distinctly American-Cub­ from a friend that Matisse loved chocolate, ist in style, but infused with stories of the Bearden bought some as a gift from the rural South, and synched with the teeming Army PX (he had served Stateside during life of New York City and the rhythms of the war). When he gave the chocolate to jazz. Bearden devised within the Cubist Matisse, the great man's reaction was decid­ idiom a new narrative potential, teeming edly cool-Matisse apparently did not care with incident and surprise. His figures do for American chocolate (who could blame not easily settle down into a single story; him?) . "Awful stuff," Matisse had said, and rather, through scraps of assemblage and a the interview never recovered. revolutionary use of color, they radiate, as This is how Bearden told it, and the story through a prism, a multitude of anecdotal is rather too good to check. In a profile of details and emotional resonances. Bearden's Bearden for The New Yorker in 1977, Calvin unique vision and innovative use of collage Tompkins reported that Bearden never met was not arrived at easily or quickly; it was Matisse, though "he and his friends used to the product of years of grappling with the see him from time to time." The last sight­ art of painting and with his own personal ing made a deep impression on Bearden. It and aesthetic past. was the sort of thing that could only hap­ pen in Montparnasse. Bearden was sitting Bearden elucidates the tension in art be­ outside the D6me Cafe, when Matisse, who tween precedence and innovation in much must have been in his eighties, came walking the same terms that T. S. Eliot described in by, propped on the arm of a younger man, his famous essay "Tradition and the Individ­ and accompanied by two women, possibly ual Talent." Tradition or "handing down," artist's models. Someone in the cafe said for Eliot, was not a matter of"following the something to the effect that the maestro was ways ofthe immediate generation before us passing by, and the waiters spontaneously in a blind or timid adherence to its success." began to applaud. This, he warned, should be vehemently dis­ When Matisse was told that this applause couraged. What Eliot advocates, and what was for him, he came over and shook every­ Bearden comprehended so fully, is the his­ one's hands. Bearden prized this story for the torical sense required to create vital new sense it gave of being in a place where artists works of art-that is, for anyone (as Eliot meant so much to people: "It wasn't Maurice puts it) "beyond his twenty-fifth year," any­ Chevalier or Brigitte Bardot," Bearden later one who would outlive the brash enthusiasm marveled. "It was a man who changed the ofyouth to make a life in the arts. The histor­ way that people saw life." ical sense, Eliot explains (mutatis mutandis, The episode became something of a substituting painting for writing): foundational story for Bearden and his art. Bearden emerged out of an American involves a perception, not only ofthe pastness modernist tradition based in New York of the past, but of its presence; the historical but which had looked to Paris for inspira­ sense compels a man to write not merely with tion. "Whoever you need for help is who his own generation in his bones, but with the you like," Bearden said, and his passion for feeling that the whole literature of Europe Matisse and Picasso, for Cezanne and Jean from Homer and within it the whole ofthe lit­ Helion (to say nothing of Rembrandt and eramre of his own country has a simultaneous the Old Masters) would prove both forma­ existence and composes a simultaneous order. tive and sustaining. .. [I]t is at the same time what makes a writer The New CriterionMay 20ll 23 Romare Bearden at 100 by David Yezzi most acutely conscious of his place in time, of As Hilton Kramer has noted, Bearden his own contemporaneity. makes use of forms that "derive originally from Mrican art, then passed into modern This last point is crucial. Only byacknowl­ art by way ofCubism, and are now being em­ edging the presence of the past can one fully ployed to evoke a mode ofAfrican-American understand the uniqueness of the present experience." Bearden was serious about his moment. inheritance and about what he bequeathed. Bearden clearly knew Eliot's essay. A small As one percipient reviewer put it, Bearden chapter from his book The Painter's Mind: "is not playing games. With a gentle sympa­ A Study ofthe Relations ofStructure and Space thy, he explores his culture and our culture in Painting, co-authored with his friend and with the delicate sensuality of a good physi­ mentor the artist Carl Holty, is titled "Struc­ cian feeling for broken bones." ture and the Individual Talent." Init, Bearden Always keenly aware of his lack of formal and Holty argue that "the supreme interpre­ training, Bearden worked hard to make up tation of [the artist's] pictorial structure lies for it. He continued to copy from reproduc­ in a change in his character and vision to a tions for over three years, looking back to oneness with all the means of his medium, The Annunciation of Duccio and from there and with art itself." A realized structure, he forward to the shifting planes of Cezanne. continues, "unites such complexities as a Bearden worried that the problem with art sense ofthe past, as well as the total response schools-and certainly with what artists' of the painter to his craft, to himself and to training had become by the 1980s-was the life about him." that they no longer taught technique; they This was patently the case for Bearden, teach success, he jibed. In other words, stu­ whose only formal training was a short stint at dents come out of school versed in the style The Art Students League in the mid 1930S with of the moment.