Editing Romare Bearden (section)

==Collage==
[[Image:Romare Bearden - The Calabash, 1970, Library of Congress.jpg|thumb|right|Romare Bearden, ''The Calabash,'' [[collage]], 1970, [[Library of Congress]]]]
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,"<ref>Witkovsky 1989: 266</ref> which was at combat with the mid-twentieth century "exploration of abstraction".<ref>Witkovsky 1989: 267</ref> 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.<ref>Brenner Hinish and Moore, 2003</ref> 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 are generally considered to be his best work.<ref>Fine, 2004</ref>

Bearden had numerous museum and gallery shows of his work since then, including a 1971 show at the [[Museum of Modern Art]] entitled ''Prevalence of Ritual;'' an exhibition of his prints, entitled ''A Graphic Odyssey'' showing the work of the last fifteen years of his life;<ref>[http://www.upenn.edu/ARG/archive/bearden/bearden.html] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070218141211/http://www.upenn.edu/ARG/archive/bearden/bearden.html|date=February 18, 2007}}</ref> ''Exactitude Ain't Interesting'', a 1992 show at [[Louis Stern Fine Arts|Louis Stern's gallery in Beverly Hills]] which included late collages and watercolor; 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.<ref>{{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}}</ref>

One of his most famous series, ''Prevalence of Ritual'', concentrates mostly on southern African-American life. He used these collages to show his rejection of the [[William E. Harmon Foundation|Harmon Foundation]]'s (a New York City arts organization) emphasis on the idea that African Americans must reproduce their culture in their art.<ref>Greene, 1971.</ref> Bearden found this approach to be a burden on African artists, because he saw the idea as creating an emphasis on reproduction of 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."<ref>{{Cite book |title=The art of Romare Bearden: exhibition dates: National Gallery of Art, Washington, September 14, 2003 - January 4, 2004; ... ; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, January 29 - April 24, 2005 |date=2003 |publisher=National Gallery of Art [u.a.] |isbn=978-0-8109-4640-8 |editor-last=Bearden |editor-first=Romare |location=Washington |editor-last2=Fine |editor-first2=Ruth |editor-last3=Corlett |editor-first3=Mary Lee |editor-last4=National Gallery of Art |editor-last5=San Francisco Museum of Modern Art |editor-last6=Dallas Museum of Art}}</ref>

In 2008 a 1984 mural by Romare Bearden in the [[Gateway station (PAAC)|Gateway Center]] subway station in [[Pittsburgh]] was estimated as worth $15 million, more than the cash-strapped transit agency expected. It raised questions about how it should be cared for once it is removed before the station is demolished.<ref name="mural"/>

"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 {{convert|60|by|13|ft|adj=on}} tile mural, McNeil said. Bearden was paid $90,000 for the project, titled ''Pittsburgh Recollections''. It was installed in 1984.<ref name="mural">{{Cite journal | title= Bearden Subway Mural Takes Pittsburgh by Surprise| website=ARTINFO | date= April 25, 2008| url=http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/27459/bearden-subway-mural-takes-pittsburgh-by-surprise/ | access-date=2008-04-28  |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080501143640/http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/27459/bearden-subway-mural-takes-pittsburgh-by-surprise/ |archive-date= May 1, 2008 }}</ref>

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."<ref>[[Neda Ulaby|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.</ref>

''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."<ref name="Gerber, Sanet 2012">Gerber, Sanet. "Return of Odysseus by Romare Bearden." Welcome to DiscountASP.NET Web Hosting. GerberWebWork, n.d. Web. March 3, 2012.</ref> 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."<ref>"Romare Bearden and Abstract Expressionist Art." ''Segmentation''. SegTech., December 5, 2011. Web. March 3, 2012.</ref> 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."<ref name="Gerber, Sanet 2012"/>