by Libby Clay
It is appropriate to
compare Romare Bearden's Gospel Song (70.18) and Jacob Lawrence's The Gamblers (74.1). These two eminent American artists
explored ways to celebrate the history, ceremonies, and lives of
African-Americans in terms of modern art. They also helped to force open
the door that had been pretty much closed to black artists, a door closed not only
for sociological notions of racial separatism but—even more humiliating—because
of an indifference to their work.
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| Gospel Song |
Both Bearden and
Lawrence experienced the great Depression of the 1930s, especially as it was
survived in Harlem. Bearden's urban experiences and memories were mixed
with memories of childhood visits to his southern grandparents. There,
life was changing but still rural. Bearden determined to preserve these
memories in his art, and so we find trains, musical instruments, donkeys, bits
of sermons, strains of music—all things now gone, but things that had great
beauty. Gospel Song recalls such a memory.
Romare Bearden,
"Romie" to his friends, died in March of 1988 at the age of 74.
He was a Renaissance man: artist, writer, poet, co-author of three books,
philosopher, musician, mathematician, and social worker. He had a degree
in mathematics from New York University, and was, during the 1950s, a doctoral
candidate in philosophy at the Sorbonne. At one time he considered becoming
a jazz musician, but painting won out.
In his painting career,
Bearden was an avid explorer—he tried color field, abstract expressionism,
figuration. He experimented with photo enlargements and torn paper
techniques. All these, plus his memories, came together for him in the
technique of
collage, which he began
to use in the 1960s. This is the medium for which he is best known, to
the eclipse of his earlier work. Collage with its sharp breaks,
distortions, paradoxes and surrealistic styles, seemed to him the perfect way
to express the blending of styles, values, hopes and dreams of his people.
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| The Gamblers |
Many of the early
collages are of city scenes, colorful, vibrant, and full of restless
energy. Gospel Song seems to be more reminiscent of his southern
country memories; the colors are more subdued. A woman is seated in a
chair. A guitar—a frequent Bearden motif—is cradled in her outsized,
androgynous hands. She is anchored to the canvas by the bowed legs of the
chair and by her Egyptian-style feet.
It is her eyes that
transfix us. They seem to be looking at us and through us, forcing us to
listen to her, to her song of the history of her people. We think of
gospel music as jubilant, but her song seems to have great sadness to it.
It is hard to turn away.
Gospel Song invites comparison with the Byzantine icon in
the Fountain Court and also with the Roman head with its wise, sad eyes.
We see the same poignancy. It might also be compared with the
compassionate gaze of the Bodhisattva Guan-yin or even the meditative musing of
Bouguereau's Young Priestess.
Romare Bearden once
said, "I want to paint the life of my people as I know it—passionately and
dispassionately, as Brueghel painted the life of the Flemish people of his
day." Gospel Song sings to us of those people.
A biography of Romare Bearden, written by Myron
Schwartzman, is due for publication in the fall of 1991. And check the
Charlotte Whitney Allen Library for a newly-released exhibition catalog of
Bearden's work.
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