Romare Bearden

When you look at Romare Bearden's art you hear things: the lonesome whistle of a train clattering through a black ghetto on the outskirts, the sass of women above the bass of men. You hear the guttural of gut-bucket blues and mazes of jazz making itself up as it goes along. When you look at Romare Bearden's art you feel things: the satisfaction of being a young woman possessed of a luxurious body that is hers to stretch any which way she pleases.

The large, bold, unabashedly painterly paintings of Henry Taylor find a fitting stage at Blum & Poe. Spaciously hung in high-ceiling rooms, interspersed with a handful of found object sculptures, the paintings have a potent presence, with a rich and distinctly human character that one rarely sees now as a mainstay in painting. The work hews close to a strain of African American painting tracing back to Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden, one that drew simultaneously from folk art and modernism in its depictions of black life in America.

Romare Bearden, whose striking collages of urban and rural black life earned him renown as one of the foremost contemporary American artists, died of cancer Saturday in New York. He was 75. Because he was highly successful early in his career, he became a totem in the black art world and often used his influence to help younger black artists. His works are in the collections of virtually every major museum in the country. Last year, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Reagan.

This may be the information age, but more specifically, it's the mash-up moment.  Images, sounds, words -- all are retrieved instantly from our collective digital memory bank by artists and advertisers alike, shaken, stirred and spilled back out. In the day when collage really did involve scissors and glue, the discontinuities it invoked had more power to jolt and disarm. Think Höch and Heartfield. Now, makers are mixers and the visual fabric of the everyday is a busy, buzzing patchwork.

Romare Bearden is certainly the most renowned African American artist of his generation and that's wrong. Wrong because there are not more of them, worse because no artist's gifts should be confined or promoted within a category of race. Bearden was one of the best artists of his generation, period. Further evidence of this comes with the L.A. County Museum of Art's newly opened exhibition, "A Graphic Odyssey: Romare Bearden as Printmaker."

The large, bold, unabashedly painterly paintings of Henry Taylor find a fitting stage at Blum & Poe. Spaciously hung in high-ceiling rooms, interspersed with a handful of found object sculptures, the paintings have a potent presence, with a rich and distinctly human character that one rarely sees now as a mainstay in painting. The work hews close to a strain of African American painting tracing back to Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden, one that drew simultaneously from folk art and modernism in its depictions of black life in America.

This may be the information age, but more specifically, it's the mash-up moment.  Images, sounds, words -- all are retrieved instantly from our collective digital memory bank by artists and advertisers alike, shaken, stirred and spilled back out. In the day when collage really did involve scissors and glue, the discontinuities it invoked had more power to jolt and disarm. Think Höch and Heartfield. Now, makers are mixers and the visual fabric of the everyday is a busy, buzzing patchwork.

Born 72 years ago in Charlotte, N.C., Romare Bearden madehis mark with a cut-out collage technique, but he is also a skilled watercolorist and printmaker. His central theme is the rural black experience much like the one Steven Spielberg chronicles in his Hallmark card of a movie, "The Color Purple." Surprisingly, Bearden's work has an idyllic tone much like the Spielberg film.

Mickalene Thomas is to contemporary painting what Daft Punk is to music: acclaimed as one of the more original remix artists working today. The 41-year-old Brooklyn artist has borrowed images and poses from established masters such as Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Edouard Manet, Henri Matisse and Romare Bearden in her paintings. But her most recent work owes a particularly explicit debt to Gustave Courbet, the 19th-century French realist who famously painted a graphic (some say pornographic)

If you were part of the vocal minority that objected to the imposition of Western values on tribal art in " 'Primitivism' and 20th-Century Art," at New York's Museum of Modern Art three years ago, you're in for another struggle with "Perspectives: Angles on African Art," at the San Diego Museum of Art. Though they're not in the same league, the two shows invite similar criticism.

Mickalene Thomas is to contemporary painting what Daft Punk is to music: acclaimed as one of the more original remix artists working today. The 41-year-old Brooklyn artist has borrowed images and poses from established masters such as Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Edouard Manet, Henri Matisse and Romare Bearden in her paintings. But her most recent work owes a particularly explicit debt to Gustave Courbet, the 19th-century French realist who famously painted a graphic (some say pornographic)

The grand and stirring exhibition of the works of Romare Bearden, which opened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington last week, is far more than a retrospective. It is a celebration -- a celebration of the art establishment's anointment of this African American painter and collagist into the highest ranks of American artists. There has often been a tendency to lump African American artists into a special and lesser place -- as genre painters of black life.

Washington, D.C. The rich and varied life of a key Harlem Renaissance figure can be seen starting Sept. 14 in "The Art of Romare Bearden" at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The exhibit kicks off a citywide festival, "Blues & Dreams: Celebrating the African-American Experience in Washington, D.C.," running Sept. 15 to Nov. 30. The Kennedy Center, hotels and museums all have something to offer. Bearden, probably born in 1911 (the date is disputed) in Charlotte, N.C.

Romare Bearden is certainly the most renowned African American artist of his generation and that's wrong. Wrong because there are not more of them, worse because no artist's gifts should be confined or promoted within a category of race. Bearden was one of the best artists of his generation, period. Further evidence of this comes with the L.A. County Museum of Art's newly opened exhibition, "A Graphic Odyssey: Romare Bearden as Printmaker."

"A History of African Artists: From 1792 to the Present" is a landmark work both in the fields of art history and of African-American studies. As the authors, artist Romare Bearden and writer Harry Henderson, note, previous art history texts have at the most covered only one or two African-American artists. And to judge from some art history texts, the authors marvel, "the first African-American has yet to pick up the brush." This voluminous effort proves this is hardly the case.

When you look at Romare Bearden's art you hear things: the lonesome whistle of a train clattering through a black ghetto on the outskirts, the sass of women above the bass of men. You hear the guttural of gut-bucket blues and mazes of jazz making itself up as it goes along. When you look at Romare Bearden's art you feel things: the satisfaction of being a young woman possessed of a luxurious body that is hers to stretch any which way she pleases.

The grand and stirring exhibition of the works of Romare Bearden, which opened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington last week, is far more than a retrospective. It is a celebration -- a celebration of the art establishment's anointment of this African American painter and collagist into the highest ranks of American artists. There has often been a tendency to lump African American artists into a special and lesser place -- as genre painters of black life.

Washington, D.C. The rich and varied life of a key Harlem Renaissance figure can be seen starting Sept. 14 in "The Art of Romare Bearden" at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The exhibit kicks off a citywide festival, "Blues & Dreams: Celebrating the African-American Experience in Washington, D.C.," running Sept. 15 to Nov. 30. The Kennedy Center, hotels and museums all have something to offer. Bearden, probably born in 1911 (the date is disputed) in Charlotte, N.C.

A coalition of professional artists, UCLA professors and students have joined to protest sponsorship by tobacco giant Philip Morris Companies Inc. of the art exhibition "Memory and Metaphor, The Art of Romare Bearden, 1940-1987," which opens at UCLA's Wight Art Gallery on Tuesday.

Romare Bearden, whose striking collages of urban and rural black life earned him renown as one of the foremost contemporary American artists, died of cancer Saturday in New York. He was 75. Because he was highly successful early in his career, he became a totem in the black art world and often used his influence to help younger black artists. His works are in the collections of virtually every major museum in the country. Last year, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Reagan.