Art

Romare Beardens art, methods as well as the materials he used were similar in terms of them being multilayered and complexity the possessed. Each of the pieces of objects employed in his body of work requires meticulous observation in order to capture the several facets it possesses. In his art career that spanned across four decades, he dealt with a wide array of media that included water and oil based paintings, monotypes, assemblage sculpturing (just one) and edition prints. However, collage is the technique that elevated to Bearden to the platform of recognition in the world of art. He used collage in avant-garde fashion right from the very beginning of his venture into this style.

He made his premier piece of collage at around 1956. Later, his works of art underwent a radical transformation around the 1960s. He had two paradigm shifts in his style. The first shift transpired between 1963 and 1964 he reverted to figuration from his abstract works. The second shift entailed an adaptation of the collage technique whilst he discarded painting. The revamped interest in figuration could be explained by his visit to France where he accrued his inspiration from European art maestros. Other artists who influenced his shift to collage are Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell. These were New York based collage maestros who had been practicing the style since the 1940s. There is high likelihood that he came across The Dada Painters and Poets An Anthology, in which collage was inclusive. This 1951 publication was edited by Robert Motherwell whom he looked up to. The 1961 Art of Assemblage that was mounted at the Museum of Modern Art contained collages mage by his former tutor George Grosz and other renown artists such as Jean Debuffet, Kurt Schwitters and Hannah Hch. Bearden began exploring his skills in collage in the wake of attending this event (Greenberg, 44-46).

His body of work exudes an element of cubism given the special attention to geometry evident in his work. Beardens stringent principle enabled his work to be consistent and ordered despite its abstractness. He broke down his methodology by stressing that he begins by drawing a number of colored rectangles. It is imperative to note that some of these starter rectangles are reduced by ratio in proportion to the main rectangle he is working on.  This is followed by pasting an arbitrary photograph on the canvas as a starting point of the process. Movement on the canvas is strictly up and across from pasting to tearing anything on it. This was Beardens way of establishing a form of control on the canvas that encompasses both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the piece of work. Another principle he used was to steer clear from overdoing slanting movements in his work (Bearden, 11-13).

From the perspective of compositional inspiration, he borrowed elements from four Dutch maestros who heavily influenced him. This was due to the high level of organization and planning exhibited by their structures that was in tandem with his inclination to interior works of art. He was influenced majorly by Johannes Vermeer and Jan Steen although Pieter de Hooch and Rembrandt also played a role. This is because their body of work was characteristically controlled in a fashion that was analogous to Mondrian. These artists achieved this quality by employing the superimposition of rectangles or inserting smaller ones into larger rectangles. This made a superimposition an integral part of his works an element that once could not miss (Bearden, 19).

Bearden developed his nouveau technique by introducing other elements. He incorporated clippings of glossy magazines, foils, wallpaper strips, fabrics and paper that was either printed or painted by him. In some sections of the canvas, he deliberately obscured them with spray pain whilst masking other sections in order to produce crisp images. He went a step further to accentuate the color and texture of the surfaces of his collage. He used bleaching, puddling and abrasion techniques to achieve this effect. The circular markings that are salient in his works of 1970s were made by employing an electric eraser (Greenberg, 47).

In his last decade (1970-1980), Bearden became more inclined to making his collages increasingly painterly. In some cases the ratio of the collaged areas equaled the painted or was somewhat smaller. This was at the close of his career as he neared his demise. He seemed to be egalitarian hence striking a balance between collage and painting. He must have deemed both skills to be equally important. He therefore allowed himself to employ both techniques which he had mastered equally well in his previous sets of works. The blend of collage and paint was so seamless that the differences between two areas covered by either were almost imperceptible (difficult to distinguish the two). The overall effect achieved by this blend was fluidity and an unmistakable luminosity that emanated from within the work. Pieces of work that clearly demonstrate this painterly style include The Thirties Midtown Sunset and ProfilePart II (Fine, 14-15).

Another Bearden style is the print medium monotype which he practiced concurrently with the collage between 1973 and 1984. This technique achieved ghost prints of images by painting them on plastics or metals. The image is then transferred to the target surface by means of application of pressure on the surface using the painted plasticmetal. His uniqueness in this technique was by the utilization of acrylic paint, graphite, gauche or watercolor for the purposes of enhancement of the print on the surface. His monotype works uniquely showed a style similar to the painterly style. This can be exemplified by The Rain Forest- Pool (Fine,16).

His works were an inspiration to artist with shared interests such as August Wilson. Wilson was a playwright who drew his inspiration from Beardens collages. It changed the direction his dramas on African-American life took. This is because Wilson ventured into the themes that Bearden addressed in his collages in regards to African- American life. His intention was in tandem with Bearden through art African Americans could be elevated to universal paradigms and address perennial issues (Schwartzman, 62).