Romare Bearden Reader

Robert G. O’Meally is Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University.

• Acknowledgments  ix"Pressing on Life Until It Gave Back Something in Kinship": An Introductory Essay / Robert G. O'Meally  1Part I. Life and TimesPutting Something over Something Else / Calvin Tomkins  31Interview with Romare Bearden / Henri Ghent  54Part II. WritingsThe Negro Artist and Modern Art / Romare Bearden  87The Negro Artist's Dilemma / Romare Bearden  91The Journal of Romare Bearden: 1947 to 1949 / Romare Bearden  99Rectangular Structure in My Montage Paintings / Romare Bearden  121The Twenties and the Black Renaissance / Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson  133The 1930s: An Art Reminiscence / Romare Bearden  156Humility / Romare Bearden  162Encounters with African Art / Romare Bearden  164Part III. Reflections on a Layered LegacyBearden: Black Life on Its Own Terms / August Wilson  175Abrupt Stops and an Unexpected Liquidity: The Aesthetics of Romare Bearden / Toni Morrison  178The Genius of Romare Bearden / Elizabeth Alexander  185The Art of Romare Bearden / Ralph Ellison  196Bearden / Ralph Ellison  204Between the Shadow and the Act / John Edgar Wideman  209Romare Bearden: African American Modernism at Mid-Century / Kobena Mercer  217Bearden Plays Bearden / Albert Murray  236The Political Bearden / Brent Hayes Edwards  256Circe in Black: Homer, Toni Morrison, Romare Bearden / Farah Jasmine Griffin  270Conjure and Collapse in the Art of Romare Bearden / Rachael Delue  281Changing, Conjuring Reality / Richard Powell  296Romare Bearden's Li'l Dan the Drummer Boy: Coloring a Story of the Civil War / Robert Burns Stepto  307Impressions and Improvisations: A Look at the Prints of Romare Bearden / Mary Lee Corlett  315Bearden's Caribbean Dimension / Sally Price and Richard Price  351Sheer Mastery: Romare Bearden's Final Year / Myron Schwartzman  363Romare Bearden, an Idelible Imprint / David C. Driskell  379Selected References  389Index  393

"Jazz music, politics, and black culture are the primary themes ofBearden's paintings and collages, while his writing-including the eight examples in this collection-lay bare his aesthetic values and practices. Essays by twenty contributors, from scholar Robert G. O'Meally to novelists Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison, contextualize Bearden's oeuvre and assess his impact on twentieth-century African American culture." (Art in America) "The varied voices here make this a go-to resource for constructing Bearden's enigmatic, seductively structured art. . . . This is the finest overall consideration of Bearden's ouevre yet, and a fulsome tribute to a justly revered artist." - Douglas F. Smith (Library Journal) "Relatively few titles provide in-depth explorations of the intellectual lives of African American artists. This reader does so in a comprehensive–and compelling–manner, and should be considered an important addition to art and literary criticism collections, useful for artists, musicians, writers, and others." - Lynora Williams (ARLIS/NA) "A valuable resource for scholars and anyone interested in Romare Bearden, art history, art techniques, the Harlem Renaissance (which Bearden calls the Black Renaissance because not all participants were in Harlem), and black US history.… O'Meally draws together the major themes of Bearden scholarship, providing a useful jumping-off point for insight into Bearden and his work." - P.A. Mullins (African Arts)