Romare Bearden

1. Romare Bearden Born: September 2,1911 Died: March 12,1988

2. Today’s Lesson • Romare Bearden • Collage, visual jazz

3. Bearden’s Life • Bearden was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. • At one point he gave up art and took up music as a career and had 20 of his own songs recorded. • He was also a baseball player for the Boston Tigers, an all-black team, and pitched for them. • Famous for his work in collage. • Throughout his life he was an artist, educator, author, theorist and benefactor who helped young African-American artists establish their careers. • Awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Reagan in 1987. He died in New York City.

4. Bearden’s Art • He is one of America’s foremost African-American artists. • He started his formal training in the 1930’s, but struggled for many years to develop a style of his own. • He returned to oil painting for a short time, then began to work in collage, through which he gained international recognition for his lifelong work on themes from the African-American experience and for his innovative collages that combine drawings and painting with photographic images.

5. Bearden’s Pittsburgh Memories (1984) This is a memory of his Grandmothers home from his childhood.

6. Bearden’s Presage (1942)

7. Bearden’s Southern Recall (1965)

8. Bearden’s The Lamp 1984

9. Bearden’s The Return of Odysseus (Homage to Pintoricchio and Benin) 1977)

10. Vocabulary Definitions • Texture: Texture is perceived by touch and sight. Texture refers to the way a surface feels to the sense of touch (actual texture) or how it may appear to the sense of sight (simulated textures). Textures are described by words such as rough, silky, pebbly. • Collage: A work of art created by gluing bits of paper, fabric, scraps, photographs or other materials to a flat surface.

11. The Piano Lesson (1983) Besides Color, what helps our eyes move around the painting? How did Bearden balance his painting? What shapes do you see and do they fit together? What kind of music do you think is being played? What objects in the house show this is the home of a music teacher? Compare the color on the two sides of the painting – how are they similar and different?

12. What We Will Be Doing • You will be making a musician collage. Use hot and cool colors to suggest the kind of music being played. Use patterned paper for the clothes. • Arrange your shapes to create your musician on your green paper. Once you are happy with your layout then glue it in place. • Choose an instrument your musician will play. Use foil to create the instrument and then glue it in place. • Add detail with black marker and then mount on black paper.