Customer Reviews

Romare Bearden: His Life and Art

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Romare Bearden is arguably one of the two or three most important African American artists of the 20th-Century (or just: one of the most important American artists). After moving through several styles from the 30s through the 50s, including social realism and abstract expressionism, Bearden found collage in the 1960s, and from then till his death in the late 80s he did his most important work. Sometimes he constructed his collages out of photos, assembling, let's say, a street scene, out of disparate parts. Even the faces will be constructed out of different eyes, mouth, etc. The result is an image that powerfully evokes the urban life of the period: its precarious hanging together, its danger of pulling apart, and its jazzy, angular rhythms, generated as the viewer's eye bounces from part to part, along the seams, to the image as a whole, and back to the parts. In later works Bearden cut the shapes for his collages from materials he'd painted, or assembled the collage and then painted over it. These new techniques add a subjective element, a visionary interior to the kinetic exterior, resulting in even more powerful paintings.

This book is the best single place to go to look at Bearden's paintings. It has a large selection of reproductions, many in beautiful color. It also has a number of fascinating interviews the author conducted with Bearden, in which the painter comes off as extremely knowledgeable about the history of art, and thoughtful about his own projects. I do wish the book had been better organized. Parts of Bearden's life and art seem left out, while what does appear seems to come in no particular order. Just because Bearden's best work was collage, a book about him doesn't have to be organized like a collage.

This book is a fantastic source of information, both written and visual, on one of our country's most underrated and neglected artists. Romare Bearden's career spanned over 50 years and his oeuvre encompasses many styles. If ever there was a "Renaissance" man of American art, this artist deserves the title. The book provides more than adequate information on his early years, family background, influences, and also brings to light the fantastic education Bearden procured for himself by studying with some of the most important artists of his time, Grosz, for example. A fantastic primer for someone looking to get a well-rounded glimpse of a true genius.

This is perhaps the best place to get acquainted with the work of Romare Bearden - one of the key American artistic figures of the 20th century (and unfortunately obscure, relative to more famous figures like Jackson Pollock or Andy Warhol).

Bearden was from Charlotte and grew up in New York City, with a college stint in Greensboro - upon his return to NYC, he began to fashion (alongside several other figures) a career as an artist. The then-emergent Harlem renaissance exerted a strong influence, and Bearden's work reflected the everyday in Harlem between the wars, modified with the strong influence of modernism.

Bearden remained a somewhat obscure figure until much later - the 1960s - when his then-recent shift to collage (digesting modernist and especially cubist influences) attracted substantial attention. This hefty book offers a great look at all phases of Bearden's career, and the visual extravagance of this compendium is of extraordinary value. The accompanying biography is a touch pedestrian - it offers all the pertinient biographical detail, but comes up a little short on context.

Still, mostly a great introduction to an artist worth getting to know.

-David Alston

Very responsive to questions, and the product arrived quickly and in perfect shape as I was told it would be.

I am a great admirer of Romare Bearden and when I bought this book I wanted to learn more about him and his art. This book has great pictures but not quite the amount of information I was looking for. I wanted to learn more about Romare's life and the book focus on an interview with Romare Bearden and a brief overview of his life. I believe the author was thinking on the saying that "pictures say a thousand words."