October 15, 2011–January 8, 2012, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Impressions & Improvisations: the Prints of Romare Bearden provides an in-depth look at Bearden’s prints and reveals his preference for improvisation within that medium.

Introduction

Bearden’s (1911–1988) life and art encompassed a broad range of intellectual and scholarly interests, including music, the performing arts, history, literature, and world art. Bearden was an essayist on social and artistic issues, a songwriter, graphic designer, set and costume designer for the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, poet, cultural commentator, political activist, and social worker. It was the visual arts, however, that were his primary focus.

A master of collage, he is also known for his watercolors, oil paintings, photomontages, and prints. Over the course of his career he was inspired by Renaissance painters, Picasso, Matisse, and African art. As a modernist, Bearden’s art is aligned with the shallow space and flat, fragmented forms of Cubism. Yet his subject matter and dynamic compositions of rhythmic forms and brilliant colors are all his own.

Impressions & Improvisations is organized into two sections: Bearden’s printmaking processes and his thematic motifs, thus providing an overview of the artist’s work. This exhibition includes more than 70 collagraphs, etchings, aquatints, lithographs, screenprints, photo projections, and monotypes created during a period of 30 years.

Process

Bearden believed that the process of making art was as important as the art itself. He used both conventional and innovative methods in his printmaking. Impressions & Improvisations presents a range of printmaking techniques and their variations.

The Train, an etching and aquatint, was based on a collage, but the image was radically transformed through the printing process. A multipart method involving several copper printing plates created from photographic negatives allowed complex inking possibilities. The print was run through the press a second time using a different plate to simulate watercolor effects.

Themes

Bearden revisited many of the same themes. His work includes African subjects such as heroic figures wearing ritual regalia and dancing in masks. Christian religion and ritual depict baptism, biblical events like the Annunciation and figures such as Noah and Salome. Greek myth was important, and Bearden’s black Odysseus is valiant. The beauty of black women was a frequent subject: mysterious women with supernatural powers, women alone with their thoughts, mothers and children, singers, women as lovers and nudes, and biblical figures such as Delilah. Images of the rural South are drawn from childhood memories of South Carolina. Bearden’s work celebrates blues and jazz, and a fondness for trains is also prominent.

Conclusion

While Bearden’s art and life were primarily informed by his African American heritage, he sought to connect the distinctiveness of African American culture with broader universal meanings.

The exhibition was organized by the Romare Bearden Foundation, New York, NY. Exhibition Tour Organization and Management by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA. Leesa Fanning was the venue curator at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. In Kansas City the exhibition is supported by the Campbell-Calvin Fund and Elizabeth. C. Bonner Charitable Trust for exhibitions.