American song: the art of Romare Bearden

Progressive, The, Feb, 2004 by Brian Gilmore

Watching the Good Train Go By was inspired b Bearden's memories of standing with his grandfather in the evening watching and waiting on trains down in North Carolina. This collage piece is specific rather than abstract.

"I use the train as a symbol of the other civilization, the white civilization, and its encroachment upon the lives of blacks," Bearden once commented regarding this piece. "The train was always something that could take you away and could also bring you where you were. And in the little towns, it's the black people who live near the trains."

But the most talked about piece in the exhibition is called The Street. Created during the civil rights movement, The Street is full of black faces and black people scattered and jammed together in a chaotic, dense, urban landscape. Their faces, at times, seem confused and despondent. Yet, many other faces seem determined and wanting, as if the time for real change has finally arrived and they intend to be a part of that change, however it is to occur.

Piano Lesson is a magnificent painting he created in 1983. In the work, an older black woman stands over a younger black girl at a piano. Their faces are deep black, and the painting is full of bold colors.

When playwright August Wilson saw this piece, he was floored. It inspired him to write a play called The Piano Lesson. Like Bearden's painting, Wilson's story is about black life in America, the daily struggle, and the quest for personal triumph. The play won the Pulitzer Prize in 1990.

Recently, jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis released an album called Bearden Revisited in tribute to the artist and the exhibition. Most of the songs are named after Bearden's paintings.

One song, "Seabreeze," refers to the early 1950s when Bearden's art was not paying well and he embarked on a career in songwriting. He co-wrote the tune "Seabreeze," and the jazz legend Billy Eckstine and other artists recorded it.

When I went to the National Gallery of Art in mid-September, a band played the music Bearden loved and painted--jazz. The musicians were enjoying themselves, and art lovers trickled into the complex. Off from the jazz band, a tent had been set up where museum workers helped a constant stream of children cut paper to make collages like those of Bearden.

"The Art of Romare Bearded" is an American song. Each time I strolled through the exhibit over the last few months, I thought of my mother and grandmother, who are also from the Carolinas. They, too, like Bearden, stepped onto a train decades ago and left their ancestral home for the North and a more equal American experience. Their experience is "The Art of Romare Bearden," a truly uplifting peek into a world that most Americans have hardly ever seen.

Poet and public interest attorney Brian Gilmore is the author of two collections of poetry, including his latest, "Jungle nights and soda fountain rags: A poem for Duke Ellington and the Duke Ellington Orchestra." "The Art of Romare Bearden" will be on display at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, February 7-May 16, 2004; Dallas Museum of Art, June 20-September 12, 2004; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, October 14, 2004-January 9, 2005; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, January 29-April 24, 2005.