May 3–September 15, 2024
Roxanne H. Frank Gallery 257
Romare Bearden: Resonances
African American artist Romare Bearden’s (1911–1988) work and approach to artmaking resonated with his contemporaries and generations of artists that followed. This exhibition highlights Bearden’s associations with five artists in the Museum’s collection. The works on view were created over a 40-year-period, both nationally and internationally, with varied techniques and media.
After completing his education degree at New York University in 1935, Bearden’s focus shifted from cartoonist to artist. This transition allowed Bearden to build networks with the writers and musicians of his day. Through these relationships, Bearden and others formed artist collectives and authored scholarly publications that continue to have an impact on a range of disciplines.
Through his own collages, prints, watercolors, and paintings, Bearden sought “to reveal through pictorial complexities the richness of a life I know.” This legacy is evident from the artists and researchers who cite Bearden as a touchstone of contemporary art.
The artist has to be something like a whale swimming with his mouth wide open, absorbing everything until he has what he really needs.
—Romare Bearden
LeRoy Henderson,
American, born 1936
Untitled (Portrait of Romare Bearden), c.1965
gelatin silver print
The Thelma and Bert Ollie Memorial Collection, Gift of Ronald and Monique Ollie 157:2017
Romare Bearden,
American, 1911–1988
Summertime, 1967
collage on board
In the center of this collage, a woman holds an ice-cream cone. Or is she grasping a microphone to sing? The narrow space of the sidewalk provides an almost stage-like setting. The man beside her rests in a chair outside a brownstone, with two faces gazing out from their respective windows. Pulsating with energy, this collage evokes a warm, summer day.
The various interpretations of Summertime highlight several themes Romare Bearden explored through his work including aspects of African American life, jazz music, and the city. His collaging practice speaks to the multilayered and multifaceted dimensions of African American realities. Bearden once said, “[what] I’ve attempted to do is establish a world through art in which the validity of my Negro experience could live and make its own logic.”
Museum Minority Artists Purchase Fund 22:1999
Phillip J. Hampton,
American, 1922–2016
Autobiography Series, c.1970
acrylic, string, and collage on canvas
The upper torso of a figure, its right arm raised overhead, hovers against a purple-black background. A red line speckled with white and blue cuts above their head. Thin, horizontal, diagonal, and vertical strings cross the canvas. Bands of color, ranging from a hazy blue, yellow-green, and a light gray, outline the central rectangle.
Phillip J. Hampton’s work transitioned to abstraction around the 1950s. The artist read The Painter’s Mind (1969) by Romare Bearden and Carl Holty in the 1970s. The book explored the technical aspects of painting such as perspective and color, elements that became increasingly important to Hampton.
Gift of John and Susan Horseman 20:2023
Sam Middleton,
American, 1927–2015
Untitled, 1990
collage of cut and torn printed and painted papers with paint and graphite
Ripped and shredded ephemera form this textured collage. Upon closer inspection, stamps and receipts, musical scores with Dutch text, a small black-and-white image of windmills, and a map of the Netherlands become visible.
Sam Middleton, born and raised in Harlem, New York, spent much of his early life listening to jazz musicians such as Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington. Middleton met Romare Bearden in 1971 at an exhibition of Bearden’s work in Geneva, Switzerland, and the pair remained in touch until the end of Bearden’s life. In a letter written to Middleton about his work, Bearden stated: “[it] gets more clean and fresh all the time, and I hear music in your paintings.”
The Thelma and Bert Ollie Memorial Collection, Gift of Ronald and Monique Ollie 174:2017
Robert Blackburn,
American, 1920–2003
printed and published by Robert Blackburn Printing Workshop, New York, New York
Faux Pas, 1960
lithograph
Shades of blue, red, orange, and black blend together in numerous shapes. This abstract formation is a typical example of Robert Blackburn’s style. In 1948, the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop (RBPW) opened, and artists such
as Norman Lewis, Elizabeth Catlett, and Romare Bearden printed there. Bearden and Blackburn had met through the Harlem-based 306 Group in the mid-1930s. They maintained a deep friendship, evidenced by the fact that Bearden was on the board of RBPW until Blackburn’s death in 1971. A relationship that resulted in fruitful collaboration, Blackburn is credited with teaching Bearden the collagraph printing process.
The Thelma and Bert Ollie Memorial Collection, Gift of Ronald and Monique Ollie 121:2017
Norman Lewis,
American, 1909–1979
printed by Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, New York, New York
Togetherness, 1973
etching
Untitled, 1949
graphite
The Thelma and Bert Ollie Memorial Collection, Gift of Ronald and Monique Ollie 164, 165:2017
Overlapping shapes, suggestive of human forms, encircle and transverse the gray ground in Togetherness. Untitled depicts a series of vertical lines drawn on paper. Norman Lewis, a friend of Romare Bearden, was primarily an abstract artist. Equally interested in the question of art’s place in the civil rights movement, Lewis and Bearden, along with a few others, founded the artists’ group, Spiral (1963–65). Though short-lived, the collective was an incubator for collaboration. In 1969, the pair, along with Ernest Crichlow (1914–2009) (see image), opened Cinque Gallery in New York, a space that exhibited work by African American artists and hosted educational programs.