inks, gesso, collage, used palette paper on 10 X 11″ w/c paper
love’s labyrinthine ways
move through us while we
play the lost and found game
the in and out game
the winners and losers game
love’s colors arouse us
its puzzle compels us
to love is to walk half blind
into a garden in bloom
with only the moon as guide
to follow unicorns
down blind alleys
to lose all direction
but that of the heart
I recently became fascinated with the art of Romare Bearden (1911-1988), recognized as one of the most creative and original artists of the twentieth century. In particular he was known for his richly textured collages which combined abstract art with real images to give a powerful sense of the lives of people, especially the African American experience he championed. His collages were purposely awkward, with body parts out of proportion to the rest of the figure, and mixed facial and body pieces.
So following on the heals of the self portrait collage lesson I created last year, I wanted to celebrate Valentine’s Day in Muse Groups with a similar lesson titled “My Love Relations” which borrowed from Romare Bearden as well as contemporary artist Ariel, with a touch of Klimt thrown in! The results were delightful and I will be sharing the students’ work as well when I have a chance to compile it.
This piece started with an underpainting, (pulled from my pile of “starts”) achieved by off loading the paint from a roller I’d used on another piece. I had saved the colorful palette paper from that day and used that for collage. The figures were copied from a monograph of Michaelangelo and the labyrinths seemed to go with the subject matter. Not my usual. . .but really fun!
Bearden is one of my favorites. I try never to miss a show of his work locally. Some of our D.C. museums own his collages and other prints, all of which are marvelous.
I saw an exhibit of his collages years ago at San Francisco’s MOMA I think. At first I thought his work was awkward, but then realized the impact of it is great.
Romare Bearden is a wonderful collage artist. I don’t find him awkward probably because I look at it from a collage perspective. Without a computer you simply cannot get all those body parts to be the same scale and size! A lot of his work was about music and he didn’t want his work to be static. I wish I could say I’ve seen his work in person, but there are books out there.
Whatever Bearden did with collage was on purpose, even if the parts were out of proportion and that’s actually what I like about it. I found a really wonderful book of Bearden at the library, returned it and forgot to write down the title. Now i can’t find it again! Have you seen this wonderful video interview with him http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/205 ?