His work depicts scenes from Pittsburgh to the Carribbean

Saturday, September 13, 2003

By Carl Hartman, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- They're striking images that demand a closer look. Even when viewers crowd up close, however, it's hard for them to tell if Romare Bearden painted a detail himself or inserted a carefully doctored scrap of paper or old photograph.

The National Gallery of Art is showing 130 works by Bearden, whose collages made him one of the most innovative American artists of the 20th century. The show, which opens tomorrow, is the first solo retrospective for a black artist in the gallery's history.

Bearden's images deal with black American life and reflect the places in which he lived, from segregated North Carolina to Harlem, Pittsburgh and the Caribbean. Many of the works in the show come from private collections and rarely have been seen by the public.

Among the most notable collages on display: "Watching the Good Trains Go By" and "Palm Sunday Procession."

Bearden was not born in Pittsburgh but he lived with his grandmother in East Liberty and attended Peabody High School.

One of his images of the city lives on in the mural "Pittsburgh Memories,' a history of the Point, in the Gateway subway stop, Downtown.

Bearden used bits of colored paper, fabric, metal foil, masking tape, photographs, newspapers carefully torn to show both print and white space, and illustrations he cut out of his books. Some of his books with pictures trimmed or cut out are on view in the gallery's library.

Bearden called the picture used on the cover of the show's catalog "The Thirties: Artist with Painting of Model." His only known self-portrait, it includes a reworking of a picture he did 40 years earlier, a separate sketch of the model and an African mask, several pieces of fabric and a color reproduction of a 700-year-old Italian painting.

Born in Charlotte, N.C., in 1911, Bearden moved with his family to Harlem as a small child. A childhood friend who lived in his grandmother's Pittsburgh neighborhood taught him to draw and, although he attended New York University and studied education, art became a primary interest.

He pursued an art career even while holding down a full-time job as a social worker. Bearden began to paint in the mid-1930s, served in World War II and used the GI Bill to study in Paris in 1950. He returned to New York and, still struggling to find the proper forum for his artistic expression, gave up painting for a time to concentrate on two other loves, music and song writing. Bearden had a special affinity for jazz.

"Jazz has shown me the ways of achieving artistic structures that are personal to me," he wrote, "but it also provides me continuing finger-snapping, head-shaking enjoyment of this unique, wonderful music."

Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art, said the Bearden show has been 12 years in the making, since the artist's widow first came to talk about what should be done with work unsold when Bearden died in 1988.

The show is just part of surge in interest surrounding Bearden. Branford Marsalis just released a jazz CD titled "Romare Bearden Revealed" that includes a new recording of a Bearden song titled "Sea Breeze."

There also is a new biography titled "Romare Bearden: Collage of Memories." And a book written and illustrated by Bearden is being published for the first time. Called "Li'l Dan the drummer boy," it's a Civil War children's story.

"The Art of Romare Bearden" will be on view at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., through Jan. 4.

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