Charlotte Teachers Institute

May Winiarski, Art, East Mecklenburg High School

(PDF)

In 2011 Charlotte, NC  has celebrated Romare Bearden’s 100^th birthday with many exhibits, lectures and events. The Mint Museum’s “Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections” exhibit, the Harvey Gantt Center had three exhibits dedicated to Bearden as well as the Jerald Melberg Gallery displaying their own collection. Students in Charlotte have been learning about Bearden in the art classrooms since 1980.

 

Introduction

“I never left Charlotte, except physically.” A place deep within himself (The South) Romare Bearden[i]

After moving to Charlotte in 2001 (for the third time in my life), I remember the sensations I would get when I happened upon a place I had not seen since childhood. Memories and warm feelings would flood in. It was like pulling those events from a place deep down inside of me. Also seeing places that I have only seen in photographs my grandparents had, gave me a sense of belonging to the history of this city, a feeling of home.

My maternal grandfather was born and raised in Charlotte, NC. He was a little more than a year older than Romare Bearden and was encouraged to study art. My grandfather instead became a forester and moved away. Living here as a child with my parents we would attend many gatherings with extended family. I have many different childhood memories from Charlotte.

Charlotte is celebrating Bearden’s 100^th birthday this Fall with many exhibits, lectures and events. All of Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s 5^th graders are experiencing field trips to the Mint Museum where “Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections” exhibit has premiered. At The Harvey Gantt Center there are three exhibits dedicated to Bearden as well as the Jerald Melberg Gallery which has their own Bearden’s on display.

Students in Charlotte have been learning about Bearden in the art classrooms since 1980[ii]. Teaching art in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system, I am fully aware of the importance of studying this local hero. Through my recent studies, I have learned the importance of recognizing him as a 20^th century Modernists equal to his White contemporaries.

I was attracted to the seminar “The Art and Life of Romare Bearden” for the personal reasons mentioned and knowing how important he is to the students of Mecklenburg County. Not only have I gained a greater appreciation for Bearden’s work, I have deeper knowledge of the people in Charlotte and their struggles in the South during the late 19^th and 20^th centuries.

This is a ceramics unit for my Art classes inspired by the life and work of Romare Bearden. It looks into how his life and influences such as family, music, trains, and the era he lived in, is reflected in his work. This unit uses many image transfer techniques to create a work in clay that draws from student’s own experiences, not merely copying Bearden’s collage technique, but redesigning it on a three-dimensional surface and making it their own story.

This Unit should work with Beginning to Advanced Art (Art I to Art IV) high school classes.

Objectives

I want the students to understand that Bearden is a major Modernist Artist of the 20^th century despite not being included in many Art History books. He was considered by many a Renaissance man. I will emphasize this with background information and comparisons of his work with other historical masters.

I would like my students to find connections to their home towns or places they have visited that have a special meaning to them. I will have students look into their family heritage, interview relatives, and look at the times they lived in. Who are they as citizens of Mecklenburg County? Students can explore and depict what they see as Charlotte, their city. What is popular? What is important to them? How did music influence Bearden and how does it influence them? Giving students options to choose from, will help them develop more personal pieces.

In this unit students would create images of themselves, family members, ancestors or places on slabs of clay. Students will compose flat compositions in clay and have the option to make them into cylinders for three-dimensional totems. They will have the choice of using red or white clay for their figures to represent race. Some may want to experiment with mixing the colored clays for a different shade to represent their heritage. The pieces will be decorated in a collage like manner using screen print, relief, engraving, decal and monoprint glazing techniques. More advanced students will have a more open ended mixed media approach allowing them to apply embellishment after the final firing of the piece.

The unit will also address the stages of clay informing students of the basics terms and identifiable characteristics of these stages. Students will also know the basics of the firing process such as at what temperatures the chemical water leaves, when vitrification happens, and at what temperature the kiln needs to reach to finish the process.

All students will explore different techniques to apply glazes and images to their projects. They will decorate the surfaces using photo transfers of people in their lives. Other images they choose and color will be applied to the pieces in the style of Bearden. They also may add text where appropriate. Pieces may remain flat or be transformed in to small sculptures. If it is desired to make the pieces more three-dimensional then have the students stand the slabs upright and attach the sides together to create an in-the-round effect.

Teaching Strategies

Introduce the students to Bearden by showing “Romare Bearden’s Southern Sensibility” YouTube video as an introduction to the unit. (See Teacher Resources and bibliography.)

Then introduce Bearden’s family tree with a hand out with the tree for them to take notes. Follow up with an introduction to Bearden’s work showing examples of family rituals, music, and art history. (See suggested Comparisons List in Resources) While showing the images talk about his childhood and family life.

After students have completed the homework assignment show “Final 9/22” You Tube video to show students Bearden’s influences. (See Teacher Resources and bibliography.) Discuss his adult life, work, and why he is considered a Modernist.

There are various approaches to determining what the student’s subject matter could draw from; their family, friends, music, art history, and/or other cultures. Bearden’s work is not limited to one particular thing, but to many different aspects of his life. Students can see the different experiences and interests that influenced his work, so that they can make an informed decision.

Show The Family, circa 1941 and discuss how Bearden depicts himself in this painting. He depicts himself as a dark skinned baby, maybe to show this is how he felt and not the actual color of his skin. This can give the students permission to depict themselves as they see themselves despite their outward appearances.

Approach the ceramics project like a collage. Use white and red clay as skin color, mixing if you choose. Be careful about the types of clay you are mixing. Some clays are not compatible. (See Teacher Resources) Have slabs of clay coated with underglazes that students can cut or tear from to form their backgrounds. Talk about improvisation and Jazz.

Give the students the option to keep the project as a flat slab or up-righting it into a three-dimensional piece.

When pieces are complete have students write reflections about their work highlighting the aspects of their work that was influenced by Bearden, their family, other cultures, and/or other artists.

Background

Family History and Early Life

Fred Romare Harry (Howard) Bearden was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, to Bessye Johnson Banks Bearden and (Richard) Howard Bearden on September 2, 1911. On November 19^th he was baptized at St. Michael’s And All Angels Episcopal Church.[iii]

How do you say his name? Ro-MARE is the most popular way to say it. RO-mer-ee is another way and only close friends called him Romie.[iv]

“Romare Bearden’s great-grandfather Henry B. Kennedy was born in South Carolina in 1845 or 46, and had been a ‘servant’ [a euphemism used after the Civil War to mean an enslaved person] to President Woodrow Wilson’s father, Joseph….Kennedy married Rosa Catherine Gosprey in 1863, when he was about seventeen.”[v]

“Rosa Catherine Gosprey was born in South Carolina in 1847, the daughter of Francis Gosprey, a white Portuguese carpenter who lived in both Chester and Charleston….Like her husband; Gosprey appeared as a mulatto in the census.”[vi] This may be where Romare inherited his light complexion and is often mistaken for being white.

“Emancipation and literacy brought Henry Kennedy a job as a mail agent on the Charlotte, Columbia, and Augusta Railroad…” The Kennedys lived in a Victorian home with a wraparound front porch in a racially mixed neighborhood on South Graham Street, in downtown Charlotte. “Today the empty lot on which the Kennedy house once stood is in the shadow of …the Carolina Panthers [Stadium]….Henry also owned a grocery store and some smaller rental houses in Charlotte.”[vii]

“The Kennedy’s daughter, Rosa Catherine (‘Cattie’) was born as the Civil War ended, in 1865….At age fifteen; Cattie fell in love with Richard B. Bearden, a prosperous harness maker.” Later they married and had three children: Harry, Anna, and Richard Howard (known as Howard). Richard Sr. died unexpectedly in 1891. Cattie continued to live with her parents in the family home. “Young Howard Bearden, Romare’s father, grew up after his father’s death in the security of his grandfather Henry Kennedy’s home.”[viii] He had been an organist at All Saints when he was a young man.[ix]

Bessye Johnson Banks was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, but was raised and educated in Atlantic City by her mother Carrie, and stepfather, George T. Banks.[x] “Both of Bearden’s parents had attended college: Bessye… graduated from the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute in Petersburg; Howard attended Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina…”[xi]

“As newlyweds Howard and Bessye Bearden moved to Charlotte, settling around the corner from Howard’s grandparents….When Romare was three or four, around 1915, his parents left the South for Harlem; thereafter he visited his grandmother in Greensboro and his great-grand parents—whom he simply referred to as his grandparents—in Charlotte over the course of five summers.”[xii]

“Bearden’s family began Reconstruction with middle-class status, but with the menacing Jim Crow laws and malignant growth of white oppression diminished the value of their homes and businesses, and forced college graduates into menial jobs. This was causing life to be increasingly difficult for Charlotte’s African-American families …and caused them to flee the South…”[xiii]

“One specific incident, which Bearden was told about much later, likely contributed to his parents’ decision to leave Charlotte. On a shopping trip in a predominantly white section of Charlotte, Bessye left Howard to watch Romare, while she stepped into a store. Howard separated himself slightly from Romare, perhaps to look into a store window. When he walked toward his son, people became suspicious at the sight of a brown-skinned man approaching what could easily have been taken for a white child. At that moment, Bessye came out of the store. She was furious with Howard for straying from Romare’s side, even for a moment.”[xiv]

According to Dr. Glenda Gilmore, when Bearden was three years old living in Charlotte, White men accused his father of kidnapping him. They tried to take Romare from his father. (Bearden had light colored, soft curly hair and green eyes like his great-grandmother.) Soon after this traumatic experience the family moved to Harlem. Later on a visit to Charlotte, Howard was arrested. He never returned to Charlotte after that.[xv]

“…Bearden spent many vacations in Charlotte until about 1925; by that time his great-grandparents had died…”[xvi] He also visited his grandmother, Cattie in Lutherville, Maryland (near Baltimore) where she had moved after she married Charles Cummings, a Methodist minister.[xvii] Experiences from these visits greatly influenced his work.

“Bearden’s maternal grandmother and step-grandfather, Carrie and George T. Banks, were additional influential forces in his life.” They lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania were also propertied having a boardinghouse that served migrant steel mill workers from the south.[xviii]

Family spent time in Canada which apparently was not a good experience. Bessye was a helicopter mom and may have changed his birth certificate making him younger when they returned to Harlem. This may have been changed for the interruption of his education during the time in Canada.[xix]

“After an unsettled period during the teens, the Beardens became prominent members of the Harlem community.”[xx] “Bessye Bearden was a dynamic figure. She was the first woman appointed to the New York City school board, a member of the executive board of the New York Urban League, an organizer of the National Council of Negro Women, and the founder and first president of the Negro Women’s Democratic Association (to name a few of her accomplishments.)”[xxi]

“In the Beardens’ apartment…family life was centered in the intellectual, artistic, and political mainstream of the Harlem Renaissance. Their circle included…[Langston] Hughes…Duke Ellington [Romare’s second cousin[xxii]]…William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, the first African American to receive a Ph.D. From Harvard University, a founder of the…NAACP,…Mary McLeod Bethune, the founder-president of the National Council of Negro Women and vice president of the NAACP; and Dr. Aubré de L. Maynard, the first African American surgical intern at Harlem Hospital.”[xxiii]

The influence of music started very early in Bearden’s life. As mentioned before, his father was an organist in Charlotte in his younger days. “Later, in the Bearden apartment in Harlem, there was a grand piano that Howard shared with the likes of Fats Waller and Duke Ellington…who often stopped by.”[xxiv] Their home was also situated where “…one could see a passageway that led straight to the backstage entrance of the Lafayette Theatre….[and] to Connie’s Inn, which, like the Cotton Club, had black entertainers playing to an All-white clientele.”[xxv]

Education

“Attending public institutions, Bearden spent his primary school years in New York (possibly attending fourth grade in Pittsburgh) and his high school years in both New York and Pittsburgh where he lived with his grandparents in their boarding house.” He started college at Lincoln University then transferred to Boston University (BU) saying that he majored in mathematics. As it turns out, both at BU and at New York University his classes were dominated by courses in art…[which] included Painting, Design, and Color as well as Cast drawing, Perspective, Drawing of Ornament, Freehand Drawing, and Art History.[xxvi]

“He received a degree in education in 1935….Indeed, given Bessye Bearden’s strong desires for her son’s future, it seems possible that his…later refusal to acknowledge his extensive formal art training initially were precipitated by his desire to avoid either hurting her or incurring her wrath, or both.”[xxvii]

He could have had a career in baseball if he chose to pass as White, but he refused.[xxviii]

“A star baseball pitcher at Boston University as well as for the all-black minor-league Boston Tigers, he declined an offer to pitch for the major-league Philadelphia Athletics in 1930 because management insisted he pretend to be white.”[xxix]

“…Charles ‘Spinky’ Alston [buried in Pinewood Cemetery, Charlotte, NC[xxx]], Bearden’s cousin by marriage whom he is cited as teaching him much about painting, [is] credited with suggesting he take night classes at the Art Students League with German-born artist George Grosz.”[xxxi]

Adult Life

In 1935 and for almost two decades[xxxii] “…Bearden was employed as a social worker in New York City, working with the Gypsy population.”[xxxiii] He frequented many of the Harlem nightclubs that later subjects of his work.[xxxiv]

From 1942 until honorably discharged in 1945 Bearden served in the army stationed in many places such as Camp Davis, North Carolina and Pine Camp, Alaska. [xxxv] During this time his mother passed away suddenly. Romare saw her for the last time “when he visited her in the Harlem Hospital. Her gallbladder had been operated on by Dr. Maynard, and she was in an oxygen tent.” She could not talk but was able to give her son a big “V” sign with her fingers before he left. She died on September 16, 1943. Both Howard and Romare took this event very hard. She was only fifty-four and had been married to Howard for thirty-three years. Howard died seventeen years later in September 1960.[xxxvi]

In 1945, he has his first museum acquisition, He Is Arisen (1945, watercolor), by Museum of Modern Art, New York.”[xxxvii]

Bearden marries Nanette Rohan, after meeting her at a New York benefit for hurricane victims in the West Indies, September 4, 1954.[xxxviii] Photographer Frank Stewart said Nanette was a quiet one. He knew her family. Nanette was one of eight daughters.[xxxix] Stewart photographed and drove the Beardens to events the last thirteen years of Romare’s life.

From February to August 1950 Bearden travels to Paris under the GI Bill. He studies philosophy and Buddhism. He is introduced to Picasso, Braque, Brancusi, and Matisse.[xl] Meets Albert Murray who at first thinks he is white until her gets to know him better.

Also he “Travels in Italy, France, and Spain…visits Picasso in Juan les Pins and spends time in Málaga.”[xli]

“In the early 1950s Bearden worked successfully as a composer, but shortly thereafter he experienced a crisis, a mental breakdown, perhaps the result of deviating from what he could not escape.”[xlii] According to Dr. Nancy Fairley, after Bearden came back from

France he could not do his work. He was upset with the Harmon Foundation for limiting not challenging African American artists. It was more about what whites thought was appropriate for African American artists to create. Or was it his Mom? Fairley continued to say Bearden could not escape his destiny. Art was a spiritual calling for him. She said Pablo Picasso had told him to paint his people.[xliii]

According to Bearden, “he had stopped painting entirely on his return from Paris, and was devoting himself wholly to songwriting from 1951 to 1954….As time passed, France became more idealized…[he] developed so acute a stomachache that he called his father and told him he thought he was dying.” Then he thought he had stomach cancer, next it was a heart attack. Eventually he “collapsed on the street and woke up in the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital. When he asked what had happened to him, a doctor explained, ‘You blew a fuse.’”[xliv]

After the breakdown his father picked him up from Bellevue. Romare knew there was a Diego Rivera mural at Bellevue that had been painted over. As he and his father were leaving Romare was feeling the walls to see if he could find it saying, “It is here somewhere…”. As they passed a guard Bearden’s father said, “He’ll be back.”[xlv]

“An extremely light-skinned African-American, he easily could have lived his life as white but refused to do so, devoting most of his art to African-American life and the struggles of blacks to achieve respect and equality.”[xlvi]

Bearden was an activist for African American Artists. “In early July 1963, the month before Martin Luther King led two hundred fifty thousand Americans on the historic march on Washington, several African-American painters met in Bearden’s Canal Street studio to form an alliance that came to be known as Spiral.” From May through August MoMA had an exhibit called Americans 1963 which included four women and eleven men none of which were African American. This was “the very moment Spiral’s meetings began.” [xlvii]

“Spiral’s purpose was to discuss “what should be their attitudes and commitments as Negro artists in the present struggle for Civil Rights’ and to explore ways they might make a unique contribution to that struggle.”[xlviii] They grappled with questions concerning the role of the artist in social change and whether or not race was an essential determinant of aesthetic sensibilities…”[xlix] “In addition to functioning as a forum for discussion, Spiral aimed to generate exhibition opportunities for members.”[l]

His Work

Some of the information that follows is quoted directly from the sources in order to be used as a reference in order not to skew the information that will be presented. This information is to be referenced when conducting or creating a class presentation for the strategies above.

Ruth Fine in Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections best summarizes Bearden’s art career. (See suggested images and comparisons no.1 and 2 in Teacher Resources)

Initially inspired in the 1930s and 1940s by political cartoons, Mexican murals, and European Cubism, Bearden’s early work was tempered in the 1950s by the artist’s several-year commitment to songwriting; his introduction to Chinese calligraphy and scroll painting; and his brief foray into Abstract Expressionism. By the early 1960s, however, Bearden’s course as an artist was set. His nominal subjects became focused on a group of places-Pittsburgh, New York, and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina; and his formal means were impacted by a commitment to collage, peppered by the inclusion of mid-twentieth century photo-based reproductive technology such as photostat and Xerox as part of his process. In later decades, a return to using watercolor extensively, a growing interest in printmaking (in editions and as unique objects), plus his extensive time in the Caribbean landscape extended both his medium and his subject base.[li]

According to Fine, “family and friendship were central to Bearden’s world, and that his Southern recollections meshed with those of his other stomping grounds to function within the realms of myth, memory, and metaphor.[lii] Carla M. Hanzel continues in saying, his “work sheds light on the universal in the everyday: the rituals of connection to family and friends, the communal meal (greens, fish, and bread) that was the reward of toiling with the earth and coaxing its bounty. His art also celebrates spiritual practices—old rites of cleansing, rebirth, and renewal—through its depictions of baptisms and bathing.”[liii] His work also deals with the spiritual through the supernatural especially his Conjur women.

Sarah Kennel in The Art of Romare Bearden describes the techniques and strategies he employs.

In 1964 Bearden employed the photostatic techniques he had used to copy reproductions of old masters to enlarge a series of collages constructed out of fragments of cut-up photographs culled from a diverse array of sources….in New York under the title Projections, the photostatic enlargements combined the formal languages of cubism and abstraction and the cinematic techniques of montage and jump cuts with the material traces of mass culture to create trenchant, enchanting visual narratives….[T]he Projection series has remained an anchor in art historical accounts of Bearden’s artistic development–the turning point…between Bearden the painter and Bearden the collagist, or between Bearden the artist primarily devoted to the exploration of ‘universal’ themes through painting and Bearden the artist acutely aware of the issues of race, identity, and their representation through a self consciously modern art practice.[liv]

Bearden refused to use linear perspective to depict space instead he choose to “focus on color and value, and his persistent quest to find the best means to arrange pictorial space.”[lv] Stuart Davis’ “…advice to always remember about color that in a painting it has a position and a place, and it makes space. And thinking of color this way, not as a separate entity but color also as form, as space, and not as decoration…”[lvi] Ruth Fine also said that Bearden used color to build space.[lvii] “Gail Gelburd’s observation that ‘”Bearden looked to Western and African iconography, but frequently referred to classical Chinese painting as a philosophical base for his compositional format.”[lviii]

“Rooted in Western art, literature, and philosophy, Bearden’s oeuvre likewise embraces African and Asian cultures, creating that distinctive amalgam that is recognizably his, a celebration of the lives of African Americans within the universe of human experience as the artist understood it.”[lix] He linked “the distinctiveness of African-American identity with what he understood as the universal or archetypal aspects of religion and myth.”[lx] “By combining fragmented imagery, Bearden devised a means of presenting the lives of African Americans with empathy and without sentimentality… [His] powerful collages confronted pervasive stereotypes about African American life and culture.”[lxi]

Classroom Activities

Homework: Family Survey/ Family Tree and gather symbols, and images from other cultures.

Have student design their compositions and create templates they may need.

Demonstrate the stages of clay (slip, workable, leatherhard, bone dry greenware, bisqueware, glazeware, and finishware) and emphasize the importance of each.

Demonstrate how to create a slab and the use of different colors of clay or clay that has been glazed with inderglaze. Students apply textures prior to cutting their forms out. Keep slab in the workable stage between classes.

Then demonstrate the different under glazing techniques: screen print, relief, engraving, decal and monoprint. (See Wandless)

Have student apply their underglaze techniques. Leave the pieces flat or demonstrate how to make them into cylinders for totems.

Let dry to leatherhard and apply all desired clay attachments and other techniques Allow pieces to dry to bone dry greenware stage then bisque fire them.

Demonstrate techniques applied after bisque firing (mainly decals and more stencils if needed) Glaze fire the pieces.

Have the students apply surface embellishments with a good ceramic glue to enhance their pieces.

Resources

Teacher Resources

Charlie Rose Video: “A discussion about the work of artist Romare Bearden with exhibition curator Ruth Fine, photographer Frank Stewart, and musician Branford Marsalis. Bearden is one of America’s most renowned African American artists, noted especially for his photomontages and collages.“[lxii]

“Romare Bearden’s Southern Sensibility” YouTube video: This video is 6:33 minutes produced by the Bearden Foundation. The beginning is about Charlotte, the train and family history up to minute 3:33 where it changes to information about the foundation.

“Final 9/22” You Tube video is from the Bearden Foundation. The beginning up to 4:10 minutes is about his inspirations (Harlem, Harleem, Homer, and Carribean), art influences (European painting, Chinese, Byzantine, Dada, Abstract Expressionism, and African Masks) , life influences (Pittsburgh, Paris, North Carolina, family ritual, myth, and memory) as well as his careers. The end of the video is the same information about the foundation.

For technical ceramic questions consult the Daniel Rhodes book and/or Highwater Clay (see bibliography and material sources)

Consult Paul Andrew Wandless book form image transfer techniques. (See bibliography)

Materials

1. At least ½ lb. of clay per student, Have available red and white clay (see sources).
2. Newspaper
3. Sketchbook for idea sketches, vocabulary, and research
4. clay in different stages for demonstration
5. slip in both colors of clay for “glue” and decoration
6. slab roller or 1/2” slats and rollers
7. a variety of color underglazes

Image and Comparison List

1. Bearden, Cotton Workers, circa 1936-44 with a mural about workers by Diego Revera. (Ritual, Historical) ( see p. 42 in Southern Recollections)
2. Chapter 2 in Myron Schwartzman’s book has many images of Bearden’s cartoons.
3. Bearden, Prevalence of Ritual: Baptism with William H. Johnson, 1901, I Baptize Thee. (Ritual)
4. Bearden, Profile/Part I, The Twenties:Mecklenburg County, Early Carolina Morning, 1978 with Jan van Eyck’s Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife Giovanna Cenami, 1434. (Ritual, Historical)
5. Pablo Picasso, Three Musicians, 1921 with Bearden, Three Men, 1966-1967, Three Folk Musicians, 1967 and/or Folk Muscians, 1942.[lxiii] (Musical, Historical)
6. Horace Pippin, Sunday Morning Breakfast, 1943 with Bearden, Sunday Morning Breakfast, 1967.[lxiv]
7. Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Judgement of Paris, c. 1528 with Bearden, Prelude to Troy, c. 1969.[lxv]
8. Pieter Breughel, Return of the Hunters (Winter), 1565 with Bearden, Winter (Time of the Hawk), 1985.[lxvi]
9. Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Burial of Christ, detail from Maestrà alterpiece, 1308-1311 with Bearden, You are Dead Forever, c. 1945, watercolor and ink on paper.[lxvii]
10. Dirk Bouts, John the Baptist Pointing to Christ: “Behold the Lamb of God”, c. 1462/1464 with Bearden, Untitled (Baptism), 1946, watercolor and ink on paper.[lxviii]

(Ritual)

11. Bearden, Profile/Part I, The Twenties: Pittsburgh Memories, Farewell Eugene,1978 with Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans, 1849-1850. (Ritual)
12. Bearden, Card Players, 1982 with Paul Cezanne, Card Players, 1890-1892 and/or Hale Woodruff, Card Players, 1930 also Palmer Hayden, Nous Quatre a Paris (We four in Paris), no date and Bearden, Sunset Express, 1984.[lxix](Ritual)
13. Edgar Degas, Cafe Singer, 1879 with Bearden, Of the Blues: Showtime, 1974[lxx](Musical)
14. Agnolo Bronzino, A Young Woman and Her Little Boy, c. 1540 with Bearden, Mother and Child, c. 1972[lxxi]

Student Resources

Suggested Handouts for the student are: Bearden Family Tree, Family questionnaire, handouts with image printed that are used in comparisons

Motifs and Themes

Works Cited

Burleson, Mark. The Ceramic Glaze Handbook: Materials, Techniques, Formulas. New York: Lark Books, 2001. Excellent sources for glaze formulas and techniques. Many beautiful pictures of examples.

Collins, Mike. “Romare Bearden at 100.” Radio Talk Show. NPR: WFAE: Charlotte. September 1, 2011.

Fairley, Dr. Nancy. “Expressions of Africa in Bearden’s Art.” Lecture, Lecture Series: Davidson College Faculty from Mint Museum Uptown, Charlotte, October 25, 2011.

Fine, Ruth Eileen, and Mary Lee Corlett. The art of Romare Bearden . Washington: National Gallery of Art :, 2003. Excellent thorough resource on Bearden with great images.

Fraser, C. Gerald. “Romare Bearden, Collagist and Painter, Dies at 75 – New York Times.” The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. http://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/13/obituaries/romare-bearden-collagist-and-painter-dies-at-75.html?scp=1&sq=Romare%20Bearden%20Obituary&st=cse (accessed June 15, 2011).

Gilmore, Dr. Glenda and Dr. Richard Powell. “Point/Counterpoint Dialogue: Bearden’s Charlotte Recollections.” Lecture, Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections from Mint Museum Uptown, Charlotte, September 11, 2011.

Hanzal, Carla M., Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, and and others. Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections. Charlotte, N.C.: Mint Museum, 2011. This is the catalog from the Mint Museum Uptown exhibit. Preface by Ruth Fine and an Afterword by Myron Schwartzman. Excellent essays and images.

, November 25, 2004. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2004-11-25/features/0411250278_1_romare-bearden-collages-whitney-curator-barbara-haskell (accessed November 19, 2011).

Lawing, Dr. Bill. “Seeing Music: Jazz in Southern Recollections.” Lecture, Lecture Series: Davidson College Faculty from Mint Museum Uptown, Charlotte, November 1, 2011.

Rhodes, Daniel, and Robin Hopper. Clay and Glazes for the Potter . 3rd ed. Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 2000. A good resource for ceramic chemical information, properties and techniques.

Romare Bearden Foundation. “Bearden FINAL 9/22 – YouTube.” YouTube – Broadcast Yourself. . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYYx-J7eaVo&feature=BFa&list=PL6C795FC881CF53F8&lf=plpp_video (accessed October 30, 2011). See Teacher Resources.

Romare Bearden Foundation. “Romare Bearden’s Southern Sensibility – YouTube.” YouTube – Broadcast Yourself. . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFXKqQ5sQFk&list=PL6C795FC881CF53F8&index=4&feature=plpp_video (accessed October 30, 2011).

Romare Bearden Foundation. “WELCOME TO THE ROMARE BEARDEN FOUNDATION.” http://www.beardenfoundation.org (accessed October 23, 2011). This is a great source for current and past information. There is an interactive timeline on the site.

Rose, Charlie. Copyright © 2010 Charlie Rose LLC.. “Charlie Rose – An appreciation of artist Romare Bearden.” Charlie Rose – Home. http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/1615 (accessed September 25, 2011).This video is an excellent introduction to Bearden with Ruth Fine and Bradford Marcalis. It helps emphasize his place in history as a major 20th century Modernist. Caution, the work “The Apprenticeship of Jelly Roll Martin” is shown.

Schwartzman, Myron. Romare Bearden: His Life and Art. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1990. Good original resource with interviews of Bearden. It includes family photos, images of his cartoons, and drawings of maps of the place he lived. The Ruth Fine book has updated information.

Smith, Dr. Shaw. “In Search of Lost Time: The Voices of Silence and the Songs of the South .” Lecture, Lecture Series: Davidson College Faculty from Mint Museum Uptown, Charlotte, October 4, 2011.

Stewart, Frank. Romare Bearden. San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2004.Forward by David C. Driskell and Introduction by Ruth Fine. Great images from Bearden’s adult life.

Stewart, Frank and Ruth Fine. “Romare Bearden.” Lecture, Lecture at the Gantt from Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Charlotte, September 10, 2011.

Wandless, Paul Andrew. Image Transfer on Clay: Screen, Relief, Decal & Monoprint Techniques. New York: Lark Books, 2006. This is an excellent source of glazing techniques that you can use in a collage type manner.

Chicago formatting by BibMe.org.