The Romare Bearden Reader ed. by Robert G. O'Meally (review)

The Romare Bearden Reader edited by Robert G. O'Meally Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019. 413 pp., 10 color ill., 50 b/w ill. $28.95

This work is a valuable resource for scholars and anyone else interested in Romare Bearden, art history, art techniques, the Harlem Renaissance (which Bearden calls the Black Renaissance because not all participants were in Harlem), and black US history. Robert O'Meally presents a wide range of sources and historical scholarship including Bearden's writing, art, and literary and musical scholarship. All the essays present work to give the readers a better understanding of the significances of Bearden's work (art, essays, plays, and music), especially in the context of Western art history and black arts. There are several books already written about and written by Bearden concerning his life and work, many of which are exhibition catalogues with extensive large plate photographs, such as those found in Myron Schwartzman's Romare Bearden: His Life and Art (1990) or Ruth Fine's The Art of Romare Bearden (2003). O'Meally draws together the major themes of Bearden scholarship, providing a useful jumping-off point for insight into Bearden and his work.

The book is divided into three sections, beginning, in Part I, with an overview of Bearden's life and the environments in which he lived and worked. Part II is a collection of significant essays written by Bearden that reflect on his creations and their relationship to the larger art world (including literature and music), giving special attention to the Harlem Renaissance and black African art. Part III presents essays by literary giants such as Toni Morrison, August Wilson, and Ralph Ellison, alongside prominent cultural critics such as Kobena Mercer, Sally Price, Richard Price, Richard J. Powell, and Albert Murray.

Each author works with different strands that influenced Bearden and examines how they informed his work. How he used color, his movement towards collage from painting, his ideas about repetition, and his subject matter all take on new meaning when reading the history revealed in this reader. One can certainly appreciate Bearden's plastic art casually. His visuals are striking and often derived from pancultural archetypes. The images resonate more once one discovers some of the history and reasoning that went into creating the pieces.

From the outset, O'Meally grounds the anthology in issues of identity and race. As he states, "The modern black American artist Romare Bearden's most urgently pursued subject was that of first-person identity, or, one might say, first-person identities. What does it mean to be 'modern'? 'Black'? or 'American'? What does it mean to be an 'artist'?" (p. 1).

Bearden had a rich background that included trans-Atlantic travel and exposure to ideas, literature, music, and imagery from many places. such as China. that he incorporated into his work. In Part I, we learn about Bearden's life history through a republished essay by Calvin Tomkins and an interview by Henri Ghent. Bearden's life has been well chronicled and O'Meally does a good job condensing the major themes within this short section. We learn that Bearden grew up in a middle- to upper-class black family that moved north from North Carolina along with other black families during the Great Migration. The moving to and fro, revisiting North Carolina to spend time with extended family, traveling from Pittsburgh to Harlem, is reflected in Bearden's imagery and subjects, which expressed movement and especially his fascination with trains. Bearden lived in Harlem during the height of the Renaissance. Family friends included Duke Ellington and Eleanor Roosevelt. His peers included Jacob Lawrence and Aaron Douglas, Claude McKay and Federico García Lorca.

In Part II, we get a taste of Bearden's own writing. This section gives insight into what Bearden thought about art and artists in general, as well as his position and growth as an artist through his work...