Romare Bearden photographic works reflect Harlem Renaissance

JOHN BRANDENBURG
For The Oklahoman | Published: June 11, 2012 | Modified: June 11, 2012 at 5:49 pm


Portrait of Romare Bearden in his studio, early 1980s. Photograph by Frank Stewart, courtesy of the Romare Bearden Estate, New York, New York. Photo provided.

A dazzling array of printmaking techniques, in both rich color and bold black-and-white, is used to create cubistic, collage-like effects, in an exhibit of work by Romare Bearden (1911 to 1988).

Containing more than75 collagraphs, etchings, aquatints, lithographs, screenprints, photo projections and monotypes, the show is on view at Price Tower Arts Center, 510 Dewey Ave., in Barlesville.

Called “From Process to Print: Graphic Works by Romare Bearden,” the exhibit was organized by the Romare Bearden Foundation in New York City along with Landau Traveling Exhibitions in Los Angeles.

Born in Charlotte, N.C., the Harlem Renaissance artist was a social worker from the mid-1930s through the 1960s in New York City, where he was appointed art director of the Harlem Cultural Center in 1964.

A collagraph plate of figures in an “Interior” demonstrates the appeal of the collagraph process — in which a print is made from a low-relief collage — for Bearden, described as a “master collagist.”

Muted monochromatic brown hues give a strong visual impact to Bearden’s early to middle 1970s collage-relief prints of a baptism, a guitar player, and of people “Watching the Good Trains Go By.”

The faces of people waiting for the “Mid Morning Local” in a 1974 photoetching with hand coloring and for “The Train” in a 1975 etching-aquatint-photoengraving are realistic yet strangely mask-like.

Color interacts nicely with silhouettes of musicians “Jamming at the Savoy” in a 1980-81 etching-aquatint which, we are told, explores “the effects achieved with rainbow rolling ink.”

Combining trains and jazz brilliantly is “Train Whistle Blues II,” a black-and-white, cubistic 1964 photo projection of men jamming in a bar, or someone’s livingroom, near the tracks.

Dealing forcefully with mundane matters, is his 1975 etching-aquatint of “The Family,” several of whose members seem to be looking up from their household tasks at us.

Equally effective is a 1973 lithograph depicting “an intimate and poignant early morning moment” of a couple “Before the First Whistle” for work at the steel mill is blown.

But if Bearden could elevate gritty, down-to-earth and realistic subject matter to nearly sublime stylistic heights, he was also masterful at handling religious and mythic themes in his work.

A 1976 lithograph called “Come Sunday” brings to mind a Madonna and Child, as the mother looks up, beside an open doorway, framing two smaller, more distant figures, in a rich-hued landscape, for example.

A serpent on an orange bank, sandwiched between a creature-filled green forest, and a fish-filled blue body of water, points to a lost, Eden-like paradise, in a 1973 lithograph called “Dreams of Exile.”

Even freer, more stylized and lyrical, in terms of silhouette and flat planes of color, is a screenprint of “Salome,” holding the head of John the Baptist on a platter, from his 1974 “Prevalence of Ritual suite.”

A dark warrior on the prow of a sailing ship comes “Home to Ithaca,” while a white horse and flaming buildings suggest “The Fall of Troy,” in two 1979 screenprints from Bearden’s Odysseus series.

The show is highy recommended during its run through Sept. 2 at the arts center in the Price Tower, Frank Lloyd Wright’s only realized skyscraper, whose modern architecture complements Bearden’s prints nicely.

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