“Romare Bearden”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Romare Bearden (September 2, 1911 – March 12, 1988) was an African-American artist and author of a history of his people's art. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils and collages. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bearden grew up in New York City and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated from NYU in 1935.

He began his artistic career creating scenes of the American South. Later, he worked to express the humanity he felt was lacking in the world after his experience in the US Army during World War II on the European front. He returned to Paris in 1950 and studied Art History and Philosophy at the Sorbonne.

Bearden's early work focused on unity and cooperation within the African-American community. After a period during the 1950s when he painted more abstractly, this theme reemerged in his collage works of the 1960s. New York Times described Bearden as "the nation's foremost collagist" in his 1988 obituary.^[1] Bearden became a founding member of the Harlem-based art group known as The Spiral, formed to discuss the responsibility of the African-American artist in the civil rights movement.

Bearden was the author or coauthor of several books. He also was a songwriter, known as co-writer of the jazz classic "Sea Breeze", which was recorded by Billy Eckstine, a former high school classmate at Peabody High School, and Dizzy Gillespie. He had long supported young, emerging artists and he and his wife established the Bearden Foundation to continue this work, as well as to support young scholars. In 1987, Bearden was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

Education

Bearden was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. Bearden's family moved with him to New York City when he was a toddler, as part of the Great Migration. He was educated in high school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and then returned to New York City. The Bearden household soon became a meeting place for major figures of the Harlem Renaissance.^[2] Romare's mother, Bessye Bearden, played an active role with New York City's Board of Education, and also served as founder and president of the Colored Women's Democratic League. She was also a New York correspondent for The Chicago Defender, an African-American newspaper.^[3]

In 1929 he graduated from Peabody High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He enrolled in Lincoln University, the nation's first historically black college, founded in 1854. He later transferred to Boston University where he served as art director for Beanpot, Boston University's student humor magazine.^[4] Bearden continued his studies at New York University (NYU), where he started to focus more on his art and less on athletics, and became a lead cartoonist and art editor for The Medley, the monthly journal of the secretive Eucleian Society (a student society at NYU).^[5] Bearden studied art, education, science and mathematics, graduating with a degree in science and education in 1935.

He continued his artistic study under German artist George Grosz at the Art Students League in 1936 and 1937. During this period Bearden supported himself by working as a political cartoonist for African-American newspapers, including the Baltimore Afro-American, where he published a weekly cartoon from 1935 until 1937.^[6]

Career as an artist

Bearden grew as an artist by exploring his life experiences. His early paintings were often of scenes in the American South, and his style was strongly influenced by the Mexican muralists, especially Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. In 1935, Bearden became a case worker for the Harlem office of the New York City Department of Social Services.^[3] Throughout his career as an artist, Bearden worked as a case worker off and on to supplement his income.^[3] During World War II, Bearden joined the United States Army, serving from 1942 until 1945, largely in Europe.^[7]

After serving in the army, Bearden joined the Samuel Kootz Gallery, a commercial gallery in New York that featured avant-garde art. He produced paintings at this time in "an expressionistic, linear, semi-abstract style."^[3] He returned to Europe in 1950 to study philosophy with Gaston Bachelard and art history at the Sorbonne, under the auspices of the GI Bill.^[3]^[7] Bearden traveled throughout Europe visiting Picasso and other artists.^[3]

Making major changes in his art, he started producing abstract representations of what he deemed as human; specifically scenes from the Passion of the Christ. He had evolved from what Edward Alden Jewell, a reviewer for the New York Times, called a "debilitating focus on Regionalist and ethnic concerns" to what became known as his stylistic approach, which participated in the post-war aims of avant-garde American art.^[8] His works were exhibited at the Samuel M. Kootz gallery until it was deemed not abstract enough.

During Bearden's success in the gallery, however, he produced Golgotha, a painting from his series of the Passion of the Christ (see Figure 1). Golgotha is an abstract representation of the Crucifixion. The eye of the viewer is drawn to the middle of the image first, where Bearden has rendered Christ's body. The body parts are stylized into abstract geometric shapes, yet are still too realistic to be concretely abstract; this work has a feel of early Cubism. The body is in a central position and darkly contrasted with the highlighted crowds. The crowds of people are on the left and right, and are encapsulated within large spheres of bright colors of purple and indigo. The background of the painting is depicted in lighter jewel tones dissected with linear black ink. Bearden used these colors and contrasts because of the abstract influence of the time, but also for their meanings.

Bearden wanted to explore the emotions and actions of the crowds gathered around the Crucifixion. He worked hard to "depict myths in an attempt to convey universal human values and reactions".^[9] According to Bearden, Christ's life, death, and resurrection are the greatest expressions of man's humanism, because of the idea of him that lived on through other men. This is why Bearden focuses on Christ's body first, to portray the idea of the myth, and then highlights the crowd, to show how the idea is passed on to men.

Bearden was focusing on the spiritual intent. He wanted to show ideas of humanism and thought that cannot be seen by the eye, but "must be digested by the mind".^[10] This is in accordance with his times, during which other noted artists created abstract representations of historically significant events, such as Robert Motherwell's commemoration of the Spanish Civil War, Jackson Pollock's investigation of Northwest Coast Indian art, Mark Rothko's and Barnett Newman's interpretations of Biblical stories, etc. Bearden depict humanity through abstract expressionism after feeling he did not see it during the war.^[5] Bearden's work was less abstract than these other artists, and Sam Kootz's gallery ended its representation of him.

Bearden turned to music, co-writing the hit song "Sea Breeze", which was recorded by Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie; it is still considered a jazz classic.^[11] In 1954, at age 42, Bearden married Nanette Rohan, a 27-year-old dancer from Staten Island, New York.^[12] She later became an artist and critic. The couple eventually created the Bearden Foundation to assist young artists.

In the late 1950s, Bearden's work became more abstract. He used layers of oil paint to produce muted, hidden effects. In 1956, Bearden began studying with a Chinese calligrapher, whom he credits with introducing him to new ideas about space and composition which he used in painting. He also spent much time studying famous European paintings he admired, particularly the work of the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, and Rembrandt. He began exhibiting again in 1960. About this time the couple established a second home in the Caribbean island of St. Maarten. In 1961, Bearden joined the Cordier and Ekstrom Gallery in New York City, which would represent him for the rest of his career.^[3]

In the early 1960s in Harlem, Bearden was a founding member of the art group known as The Spiral formed "for the purpose of discussing the commitment of the Negro artist in the present struggle for civil liberties, and as a discussion group to consider common aesthetic problems."^[13] The first meeting was held in Bearden's studio on July 5, 1963 and was attended by Bearden, Hale Woodruff, Charles Alston, Norman Lewis, and James Yeargans, Felrath Hines, Richard Mayhew, and William Pritchard. Woodruff was responsible for naming the group The Spiral suggesting the way in which the Archimedes spiral ascends upward as a symbol of progress. Over time the group expanded to include Merton Simpson, Emma Amos, Reginald Gammon, Alvin Hollingsworth, Calvin Douglas, Perry Ferguson, William Majors and Earle Miller. Stylistically the group ranged from Abstract Expressionists to social protest painters.^[13]

Bearden's collage work began in 1963 or 1964.^[3] He first combined images cut from magazines and colored paper, which he would often with further alter with the use of sandpaper, bleach, graphite or paint.^[3] Bearden enlarged these collages through the photostat process.^[3] Building on the momentum from a successful exhibition of his photostat pieces at the Cordier and Ekstrom Gallery in 1964, Bearden was invited to do a solo exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. This heightened his public profile.^[3] Bearden's collage techniques changed over the years and in later pieces, he would use blown-up photostat photographic images, silk-screened, colored paper, and billboard pieces to create large collages on canvas and fiberboard.^[3]

In 1971, the Museum of Modern Art held a retrospective exhibition of Bearden's work.^[3]

Early works

His early works suggest the importance of African Americans' unity and cooperation. For instance, The Visitation implies the importance of collaboration of black communities by depicting intimacy between two black women who are holding hands. Bearden's vernacular realism represented in the work makes The Visitation noteworthy; he describes two figures in The Visitation somewhat realistically but does not fully follow the pure realism, and distorts and exaggerates some parts of their bodies to "convey an experiential feeling or subjective disposition."^[14] Bearden said, "the Negro artists [...] must not be content with merely recording a scene as a machine. He must enter wholeheartedly into the situation he wishes to convey."^[14]

In 1942, Bearden produced Factory Workers (gouache on casein on brown kraft paper mounted on board), which was commissioned by Forbes magazine to accompany an article titled The Negro's War.^[15] The article "examined the social and financial costs of racial discrimination during wartime and advocated for full integration of the American workplace."^[16] Factory Workers and its companion piece Folk Musicians serve as prime examples of the influence that Mexican muralists played in Bearden's early work.^[15]^[16]

Collage

Bearden had struggled with two artistic sides of himself: his background as "a student of literature and of artistic traditions, and being a black human being involves very real experiences, figurative and concrete",^[17] which was at combat with the mid-twentieth century "exploration of abstraction".^[18] His frustration with abstraction won over, as he himself described his paintings' focus as coming to a plateau. Bearden then turned to a completely different medium at a very important time for the country.

During the civil rights movement, Bearden started to experiment again, this time with forms of collage.^[19] After helping to found an artists group in support of civil rights, Bearden expressed representational and more overtly socially conscious aspects in his work. He used clippings from magazines, which in and of itself was a new medium, as glossy magazines were fairly new. He used these glossy scraps to incorporate modernity in his works, trying to show how African-American rights were moving forward, and so was his socially conscious art. In 1964, he held an exhibition he called Projections, where he introduced his new collage style. These works were very well received, and these are generally considered to be his best work.^[20]

Bearden had numerous museum shows of his work since then, including a 1971 show at the Museum of Modern Art entitled Prevalence of Ritual, an exhibition of his hprints, entitled A Graphic Odyssey showing the work of the last fifteen years of his life;^[21] and the 2005 National Gallery of Art retrospective entitled The Art of Romare Bearden. In 2011, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery exhibited its second show of the artist's work, Romare Bearden (1911–1988): Collage, A Centennial Celebration, an intimate grouping of 21 collages produced between 1964 and 1983.^[22]

One of his most famous series, Prevalence of Ritual, concentrated mostly on southern African-American life. He used these collages to show his rejection of the Harmon Foundation's (a New York City arts organization) emphasis on the idea that African Americans must reproduce their culture in their art.^[23] Bearden found this to be a burden on African artists, because he saw this idea creating an emphasis on reproducing something that already exists in the world. He used this new series to speak out against this limitation on Black artists, and to emphasize modern art.

In this series, one of the pieces is entitled Baptism. Bearden was influenced by Francisco de Zurbarán, and based Baptism on Zurbarán's painting The Virgin Protectress of the Carthusians. Bearden wanted to show how the water that is about to be poured on the subject being baptized is always moving, giving the whole collage a feel and sense of temporal flux. He wanted to express how African Americans' rights were always changing, and society itself was in a temporal flux at the time. Bearden wanted to show that nothing is fixed, and expressed this idea throughout the image: not only is the subject about to have water poured from the top, but the subject is also to be submerged in water. Every aspect of the collage is moving and will never be the same more than once, which was congruent with society at the time.

In "The Art of Romare Bearden", Ruth Fine describes his themes as "universal". "A well-read man whose friends were other artists, writers, poets and jazz musicians, Bearden mined their worlds as well as his own for topics to explore. He took his imagery from both the everyday rituals of African American rural life in the south and urban life in the north, melding those American experiences with his personal experiences and with the themes of classical literature, religion, myth, music and daily human ritual."{{citation needed|date=January 2019}}

In 2008 a 1984 mural by Romare Bearden in the Gateway Center subway station in Pittsburgh was estimated as worth $15 million, more than the cash-strapped transit agency expected. This has raised questions about how it should be cared for once it is removed before the station is demolished.^[42]

"We did not expect it to be that much," Port Authority of Allegheny County spokeswoman Judi McNeil said. "We don't have the wherewithal to be a caretaker of such a valuable piece." It would cost the agency more than $100,000 a year to insure the 60-foot-by-13-foot tile mural, McNeil said. Bearden was paid $90,000 for the project, titled Pittsburgh Recollections. It was installed in 1984.^[24]

Before his death, Bearden claimed the collage fragments aided him to usher the past into the present: "When I conjure these memories, they are of the present to me, because after all, the artist is a kind of enchanter in time."^[25]

The Return of Odysseus, one of his collage works held by the Art Institute of Chicago, exemplifies Bearden's effort to represent African-American rights in a form of collage. This collage describes one of the scenes in Homer's epic Odyssey, in which the hero Odysseus is returning home from his long journey. The viewer's eye is first captured by the main figure, Odysseus, situated at the center of the work and reaching his hand to his wife. All the figures are black, enlarging the context of the Greek legend. This is one of the ways in which Bearden works to represent African-American rights; by replacing white characters with blacks, he attempts to defeat the rigidity of historical roles and stereotypes and open up the possibilities and potential of blacks. "Bearden may have seen Odysseus as a strong mental model for the African-American community, which had endured its own adversities and setbacks."^[26] By portraying Odysseus as black, Bearden maximizes the potential for empathy by black audiences.

Bearden said that he used collage because "he felt that art portraying the lives of African Americans did not give full value to the individual. [...] In doing so he was able to combine abstract art with real images so that people of different cultures could grasp the subject matter of the African American culture: The people. This is why his theme always exemplified people of color."^[27] In addition, he said that collage's technique of gathering several pieces together to create one assembled work "symbolizes the coming together of tradition and communities."^[26]

Legacy

Romare Bearden died in New York City on March 12, 1988, due to complications from bone cancer. The New York Times described Bearden in its obituary as "one of America's pre-eminent artists" and "the nation's foremost collagist."^[1]

Two years after his death, The Romare Bearden Foundation was founded. This non-profit organization not only serves as Bearden's official Estate, but also helps "to preserve and perpetuate the legacy of this preeminent American artist."^[28] Recently, it has begun developing grant-giving programs aimed at funding and supporting children, young (emerging) artists and scholars.^[29]

In Charlotte, a street was named after Romare Bearden, intersecting West Boulevard, on the west side of the city. Romare Bearden Drive is lined by the West Boulevard Public Library branch and rows of townhouses.

Inside the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Main Library (310 N. Tryon Street) is Bearden's mosaic, Before Dawn.^[30] After Bearden's death, his widow selected a 12" x 18" collage by him to be recreated in smalti (glass tiles) by Crovatto Mosaics in Spilimbergo, Italy, for the Grand Reopening Gala (18 June 1989) of the 'new' library. She was publicly honored at the ceremony for her contribution. The reinterpreted work is 9 feet tall and 13.5 feet wide.

Ground breaking for Romare Bearden Park in Charlotte, took place at 9 am on September 2, 2011 and the completed park opened in late August 2013. It is situated on a 5.2-acre parcel located in Third Ward between Church and Mint streets. The artist lived near the new park for a time as a child, at the corner of MLK Boulevard and Graham Street. The park design is based on work of public artist Norie Sato.^[31] Her concepts were inspired by Bearden's multimedia collages.

DC Moore Gallery currently represents the Estate of Romare Bearden. The first exhibition of his works at the gallery was in September 2008.^[32] In 2014-2015, Columbia University hosted a major Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition of Bearden's work and an accompanying series of lectures, readings, performances, and other events celebrating the artist. On display at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Gallery on Columbia's Morningside campus, and also at Columbia's Global Centers in Paris and Istanbul, Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey focused on the cycle of collages and watercolors Bearden completed in 1977 based on Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey.^[33]

In 2011, the U.S. Postal Service released a set of Forever stamps featuring four of Bearden's paintings during a first-day-of-issuance ceremony at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.^[34]

In 2017, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond announced acquisition of Romare Bearden's collage, Three Folk Musicians, as part of the museum's permanent collection. The collage, which shows two guitar players and a banjo player,

is often cited in art history books. It was shown at the VMFA for the first time in February 2017 in the museum's Mid to Late 20th-Century Galleries.^[35]

Published works

Honors achieved

Awards

Works of Art

Selected Collections

Further reading

References

1. ^¹Fraser, C. Gerald. [https://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/13/obituaries/romare-bearden-collagist-and-painter-dies-at-75.html Romare Bearden, Collagist and Painter, Dies at 75]. The New York Times. March 13, 1988.
2. ^{{cite web |url=http://www.nga.gov/feature/bearden/index.shtm |title=National Gallery of Art: The Art of Romare Bearden - Introduction |publisher=Nga.gov |date= |accessdate=2015-11-15 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160123110115/http://www.nga.gov/feature/bearden/index.shtm |archivedate=January 23, 2016 |df=mdy-all }}
3. ^¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹¹⁰¹¹¹²{{Cite web|url=http://www.oxfordartonline.com:80/subscriber/article/grove/art/T2085630|title=Bearden, Romare|last=|first=|date=|website=Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online.|publisher=Oxford University Press|access-date=19 January 2017}}
4. ^{{cite web |title=Bearden Foundation |url=http://www.beardenfoundation.org/artlife/biography/biography.shtml |accessdate=April 14, 2013 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20130523233801/http://www.beardenfoundation.org/artlife/biography/biography.shtml |archivedate=May 23, 2013 |df=mdy-all }}
5. ^¹Romare Bearden Foundation, 1990
6. ^{{cite web|title=Biography|url=http://www.beardenfoundation.org/artlife/biography/biography.shtml|website=Romare Bearden Foundation|publisher=Romare Bearden Foundation|accessdate=27 January 2017|deadurl=yes|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170131085735/http://www.beardenfoundation.org/artlife/biography/biography.shtml|archivedate=January 31, 2017|df=mdy-all}}
7. ^¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹¹⁰¹¹{{Cite book|title=Bearden, Romare (Howard), St. James Guide to Black Artists|last=Valakos|first=Dorothy|publisher=St. James Press|year=1997|isbn=|location=Detroit|pages=41–45|quote=|via=|st. james guide to black artists=}}
8. ^Witkovsky 1989: 258
9. ^Witkovsky 1989: 260
10. ^Witkovsky, 1989: 260
11. ^ {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070510142055/http://usinfo.state.gov/scv/Archive/2006/May/24-246536.html |date=May 10, 2007 }}
12. ^{{Cite web|url=https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/Education/learning-resources/teaching-packets/pdfs/bearden-tchpk.pdf|title=The Art of Romare Bearden: A Resource for Teachers|last=Carter|first=Richard|date=2003|website=nga.gov|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=}}
13. ^¹{{Cite book|author1=Bearden, Romare |author2=Henderson, Harry, P. |lastauthoramp=yes |title=A History of African-American Artists. From 1792 to present |publisher=New York: Pantheon Books |year=1993|page=400}}
14. ^¹Mercer, Kobena. "Romare Bearden, 1964; Collage as Kunstwollen." Cosmopolitan Modernisms. London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 2005. 124–45.
15. ^¹{{Cite book|title=Villa America: American Moderns, 1900-1950|last=Armstrong|first=Elizabeth|publisher=Orange County Museum of Art|year=2005|isbn=0-917493-41-9|location=|pages=98|quote=|via=}}
16. ^¹{{Cite web|url=https://collections.artsmia.org/art/4428/factory-workers-romare-howard-bearden|title=Factory Workers, Romare Howard Bearden|last=|first=|date=|website=artsmia.org|publisher=|access-date=28 January 2017}}
17. ^Witkovsky 1989: 266
18. ^Witkovsky 1989: 267
19. ^Brenner Hinish and Moore, 2003
20. ^Fine, 2004
21. ^ {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070218141211/http://www.upenn.edu/ARG/archive/bearden/bearden.html |date=February 18, 2007 }}
22. ^{{cite journal|last=Oisteanu|first=Valery|title=Romare Bearden (1911–1988): Collage, A Centennial Celebration|journal=The Brooklyn Rail|date=May 2011|url=http://brooklynrail.org/2011/05/artseen/romare-bearden-19111988-collage-a-centennial-celebration}}
23. ^Greene, 1971.
24. ^¹{{Cite journal | title= Bearden Subway Mural Takes Pittsburgh by Surprise| publisher=ARTINFO | date= April 25, 2008| url=http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/27459/bearden-subway-mural-takes-pittsburgh-by-surprise/ | accessdate=2008-04-28 | postscript= }}
25. ^Ulaby, Neda. [https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1428038 "The Art of Romare Bearden: Collages Fuse Essence of Old Harlem, American South"], NPR. 14 September 2003.
26. ^¹Gerber, Sanet. "Return of Odysseus by Romare Bearden." Welcome to DiscountASP.NET Web Hosting. GerberWebWork, n.d. Web. March 3, 2012.
27. ^"Romare Bearden and Abstract Expressionist Art." Segmentation. SegTech., December 5, 2011. Web. March 3, 2012.
28. ^{{cite web |url=http://www.beardenfoundation.org/mission.shtml |title=The Romare Bearden Foundation - Mission |publisher=Beardenfoundation.org |date= |accessdate=2015-11-15 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923183041/http://www.beardenfoundation.org/mission.shtml |archivedate=September 23, 2015 |df=mdy-all }}
29. ^{{cite web |url=http://www.beardenfoundation.org/programs/newinitiatives.shtml |title=ROMARE BEARDEN FOUNDATION - Foundation Programs |publisher=Beardenfoundation.org |date= |accessdate=2015-11-15 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20151021063222/http://www.beardenfoundation.org/programs/newinitiatives.shtml |archivedate=October 21, 2015 |df=mdy-all }}
30. ^ {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140114083043/http://cielcharlotte.com/artwork/1450295_Before_Dawn_Design_Romare_Bearden.html |date=January 14, 2014 }}
31. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.beardenfoundation.org/supportbeardenpark/bearden_park_design.html |title=Bearden Park Design - Support Romare Bearden Park! |publisher=Beardenfoundation.org |date= |accessdate=2015-11-15}}
32. ^{{cite web|title=DC Moore Gallery, Romare Bearden artist page|url=http://www.dcmooregallery.com/artists/romare-bearden|publisher=Dcmooregallery.com|accessdate=2015-11-15}}
33. ^Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey, Columbia University Center for Teaching and Learning, September 22, 2015.
34. ^https://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2011/pr11_110.htm
35. ^{{cite news|last1=Calos|first1=Katherine|title=VMFA's Bearden acquisition called a 'game-changer':Three Folk Musicians' collage will go on display in Richmond on Feb. l|issue=Metro|publisher=Richmond Times-Dispatch|date=January 19, 2017|pages=B1, B3}}
36. ^Asante, Molefi Kete (2002). 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Amherst, New York. Prometheus Books. {{ISBN|1-57392-963-8}}.
37. ^{{cite web |url=https://www.nga.gov/feature/bearden/170-025.htm |title=NGA: The Art of Romare Bearden - Pittsburgh Memory, 1964 |publisher=Nga.gov |date= |accessdate=2015-11-15 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304073000/https://www.nga.gov/feature/bearden/170-025.htm |archivedate=March 4, 2016 |df=mdy-all }}
38. ^{{cite web|url=http://tapestrycenter.org/?page_id=270 |title=GFR Tapestry Program » Romare Bearden, "Recollection Pond" |publisher=Tapestrycenter.org |date=1999-02-22 |accessdate=2015-11-15}}