The Art of Romare Bearden - Timothy R. Quigley

The MassachusettsReviewhis mark upon the world through art and his ties to his group andits claims upon him.Fortunately for them and for us, Romare Bearden has faced thesequestions for himself, and since he is an artist whose social consciousness is no less intense than his dedication to art, his example isof utmost importance for all who are concerned with grasping something of the complex interrelations between race, culture and theindividual artist as they exist in the United States. Bearden isaware that for Negro Americans these are times of eloquent protestand intense struggle, times of rejection and redefinition?but he alsoknows that all this does little to make the question of the relation ofthe Negro artist to painting any less difficult. And if the cries in thestreet are to find effective statement on canvas they must undergoa metamorphosis. For in painting, Bearden has recently observed,there is little room for the lachrymose, for self-pity or raw complaint; and if they are to find a place in painting this can only beaccomplished by infusing them with the freshest sensibility of thetimes as it finds existence in the elements of painting.During the late Thirties when I first became aware of Bearden'swork, he was painting scenes of the Depression in a style stronglyinfluenced by the Mexican muralists. This work was powerful, thescenes grim and brooding, and through his depiction of unemployedworkingmen in Harlem he was able, while evoking the Southernpast, to move beyond the usual protest painting of that period toreveal something of the universal elements of an abiding humancondition. By striving to depict the times, by reducing scene, character and atmosphere to a style, he caught both the universality ofHarlem life and the "harlemness" of the national human predicament.I recall that later under the dual influences of Hemingway andthe poetic tragedy of Frederico Garcia Lorca, Bearden created avoluminous series of drawings and paintings inspired by Lorca'sLament for Ignacion Sanchez Mejias. He had become interested inmyth and ritual as potent forms for ordering human experience,and it would seem that by stepping back from the immediacy of theHarlem experience?which he knew both from boyhood and asa social worker?he was freed to give expression to the essentiallypoetic side of his vision. The products of that period were marked bya palette which in contrast with the somber colors of the earlier workand despite the tragic theme with its underlying allusions to Christian rite and mystery, was brightly sensual. And despite their havingbeen consciously influenced by the compositional patterns of theItalian primitives, and the Dutch masters, these works were alsoresolutely abstract.676