The Romare Bearden Foundation in New York organized the traveling exhibition Romare Bearden: Artist as Activist and Visionary currently on view at the Frick Museum in Pittsburgh. For over fifty years Bearden portrayed and commemorated in his art the life that surrounded him. New York, Charlotte, NC [where he was born] and Pittsburgh were the cities of Bearden’s childhood and each made an indelible impression on him that influenced his art for decades. He benefited from living in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance.  Bearden’s family’s apartment on West 131^st Street in Harlem was a hub where such cultural giants as W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Countee Cullen, as well as artists Aaron Douglas and Charles Alston, and jazz musicians Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, and Andy Razaf frequently gathered.  As an adolescent Bearden became immersed in jazz and blues—this was convenient given his home was only a few blocks from The Lincoln Theatre, Savoy Ballroom and other music venues.

What is distinct to the Frick’s presentation is Bearden’s connection to Pittsburgh.  Melanie Groves, curator of the Frick’s presentation of this exhibition, expressed, “The opportunity to present Romare Bearden: Artist as Activist and Visionary, not far from where the artist first took up drawing in his early years, and in a city that inspired and informed much of his work, is an honor for the Frick.” In 1925, he moved to Pittsburgh to live with his maternal grandmother and graduated from Peabody High School in 1929. She operated a boarding house that provided rooms for black steel mill workers, many of whom had recently migrated from the South.  Seeing and hearing the workers stories impacted Bearden perspective about the life of these workingmen, especially their dissatisfaction with working conditions and pervasive racial discrimination.  Moreover Bearden’s artistic interests were developed in Pittsburgh when his boyhood friend, Eugene Bailey, taught him how to draw; though his interest in art waned for a while after Bailey’s premature death. Another connection of Bearden to Pittsburgh is an expansive tile mural bursting with color, “Pittsburgh Recollections” that he created it in 1984 for the original Gateway Center T station and reinstalled in 2012 the Gateway Center light-rail station downtown.  It was water damaged in 2011 however was saved after its estimated worth was $15 million.  A collage of this mural is on view at the Frick.

Although he graduated from New York University in 1935 with a B.S. degree in science (with thoughts of going on to medical school) Bearden persisted drawing as a cartoonist for the university’s magazine Medley, depicting humor from the 1930’s and made editorial drawings for the Saturday Evening Post as well as for the Baltimore Afro-American. 

In 1935 he decided to become a visual artist after meeting a group of people who later founded the Harlem Artists Guild.  African-American artists including Augusta Savage, Charles Alston, Elba Lightfoot, Louise E. Jefferson and Arthur Schomburg created the organization.  By 1936 Bearden was a member of the 306 Group, named after the studio lofts at 306 West 141^st Street, where colleagues frequently met to share ideas. Additionally Bearden enrolled at the Art Students League and it was here that he studied under the German artist George Grosz, known for his caricatural drawings and biting paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s.  Grosz played a significant in Bearden’s artistic growth, introducing him to the works of Daumier, Goya, Breughel, and Köllwitz and such old masters as Ingres, Dürer, Holbein, and Poussin.

After his military service in the US Army during WWII, Bearden decided to go to Paris in 1950 to study philosophy at the Sorbonne on the G.I. Bill.  In the ‘City of Light’ Bearden met Georges Braque, Constantin Brâncu?i and other French and American artists and writers.  Unsurprisingly, he spent time studying works in museums and galleries as well as travelling to Nice, Florence, Rome, and Venice.

It is this multifaceted exposure to the past that formed the core of Bearden’s understanding about the formal qualities of art in addition to how to meld his unique message into the rich vibrant paintings, drawings, collages, and photomontages where he beatified Afro-American experience in the United States.  

The Frick exhibition begins with Bearden’s early work from the 1930s including the editorial cartoons previously mentioned as well as a painting titled “Soup Kitchen”, and several pieces of his commercial work. In these works one can see his early ability as a draftsman and a compassion for politics, race and social injustice.

A large section of this show titled Visualizing the African American Landscape highlights Bearden’s endeavors to portray a layered image of Black America, interconnected by social history, ritual, and a pursuit of justice.  Bearden produced some of his largest and most innovative works between 1967 and 1969 though he continued to experiment formally and to engage in social issues throughout his career.  Although many refer to his art as collages, Romare Bearden insisted his works were “paintings, not collages”, because he used the techniques and materials of collage to create the rhythms, surfaces, tones, and moods associated with painting.  The civil rights movement also influenced his art prompting him to become more representational and socially conscious. Even though his collage work evinces inspiration from abstract art, it also displays traces of African American enslaved crafts, especially patchwork quilts, and the use of found materials.

Memories of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, abound in his art confirming Bearden’s roots in the rural South.  Inspired by improvisational jazz music, Bearden started creating collages in 1964 depicting African-American life in the rural South and Harlem. Bearden’s piece “The Piano Lesson”, 1983 inspired August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “The Piano Lesson”.  Also from this series is Bearden’s lithograph “Homage to Mary Lou” (The Piano Lesson), 1984 in which he depicts a music teacher and her student in a Southern parlor.  He dedicated this image to Williams a great jazz pianist, who, like Bearden, moved from the South to Pittsburgh.  Both work are similar in color, composition and structure and were inspired by two Henri Matisse paintings “The Piano Lesson” (1916) and “The Music Lesson” (1917).

Another section titled Bearden and Women depicts strong images of women, who he portrays as healers, protectors, and goddesses. Black Women throughout the ages have played a vital role in the fight to cure many social injustices in American society.  This includes the abolition of slavery; voting rights; education for all and the end of segregation. Resilient women in his life undoubtedly inspired Bearden.  “Falling Star,” 1980 a vivid colorful image is an exceptional lithograph layered with meaning.  Perhaps Bearden was inspired by John Donne’s poem, “To Catch a Falling Star” implies the impossibility of finding a truly good woman.  The falling star against the vibrant blue sky outside the window may perhaps signify such a woman. A tall black woman, dressed in colorful attire confidently stands while sipping tea. She fills a large portion of this composition yet appears oblivious to the scene outside her window.  Another striking work in this section is “The Woman”, 1985; collage and pigment on board.   The frontal portrayal of a hefty, anonymous woman fills the frame in this colorful work.  The strong woman is engaged in her own thoughts somewhat akin to Mary Cassatt’s portrayal of her mother, “Reading Le Figaro”. Throughout many of the pieces Bearden’s knowledge of Cubism is apparent. This is evident in his use of flattened space and angular forms with areas of bright color framed by black outline.

The final segment of this exhibition, “Li’l Dan: the drummer boy, A Civil War Story”, contains collages and watercolors from the only children’s book Romare Bearden illustrated and wrote. It is believed he wrote the manuscript and made the illustrations some time in the 1970s although, it was never printed.  Simon & Schuster published the manuscript in 2003 along with the original paintings and collages that were found among Bearden’s papers. Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote the introduction.  It is a memorable tale about a slave boy who loved to play his drum and used his music to save a company of Union soldiers.  According to Robin Kelly who was married to Bearden’s niece, “At the time, there were a slew of books on African American history, an increasing number written for children. Bearden was hardly joining the bandwagon, but he must have seen a need for a book that resists the story of how oppressed we were under slavery but rather focused on how important African Americans were in bringing liberty and freedom to the entire country. The fact that black music and black people, in this sweet tale, quite literally save America, is precisely one of those metaphors that have driven much of his visual art.”  The imagery in this historical fiction illustrates Bearden’s acute talent as an illustrator who tells a compelling story filled with compassion and optimism.

This exhibition provides viewers with only the tip of the iceberg of Romare Bearden’s in-depth oeuvre.  He was immensely prolific yet not recognized as a major American artist because the art world in the United States maintained the same prejudices and segregation of society. Fortunately “the times they are a’ changin” for Afro-American artists as more people recognize the major contributions these artists have made. Moreover Sam Gilliam, a pioneering abstractionist, who has made work for six decades is finally getting the respect and exposure that is also long overdue. Artists as Bearden and Sam Gilliam are dissimilar from many black artists today who put social justice ideology above their final art product.  The earlier Afro-American artists had an ability to captivate and experiment with the cultural history that interested and shaped them.  Jed Perl has written, “The erosion of art’s imaginative ground, often blamed on demagogues of the left and the right, is taking place in the very heart of the liberal, educated, cultivated audience—the audience that arts professionals always imagined they could count on. The whole question is so painful and so difficult that I have frankly hesitated to tackle it. It is relatively easy to point to the deformations of art at the hands of politically correct left-wingers and cheap-shot moralists on the right, as the late Robert Hughes did in the fast-paced, witty series of lectures that he published as Culture of Complaint in 1993…The challenge for everybody who is involved with the arts—with opera, dance, and theater companies, museums, symphony orchestras, newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses—is how to make the case for the arts without condemning the arts to the hyphenated existence that violates their freestanding significance.”

By Elaine A. King, Contributing Editor

Romare Bearden: Artist as Activist and Visionary

Frick Museum, Pittsburgh

April 30, 2022 – September 18, 2022