Art

caption: "CATTLE OF THE SUN GOD": Another side of the art of Romare Bearden can be seen in this color silk screen from his Odyssey series, on view in "Romare Bearden: Enchanter in Time," which will be at the Michener through February 5.

caption: "INTRODUCTION OF A BLUES QUEEN": The closest thing to true color in this lithograph by Romare Bearden is the strand of yellow light trailing down on the singer. The arabesques above the band are pale green. The element is cool, smoky, nebulous.

James A. Michener Art Museum: Romare Bearden: Where There's Smoke There's Jazz

Stuart Mitchner

Thinking about jazz and night clubs and the art of Romare Bearden (1911 – 1988) in the light of recent events, I made a connection that explains something about the quality of the jazz lithographs Bearden created in the 1970s, a number of which are on view in the Michener Museum's current exhibit, "Romare Bearden: Enchanter in Time." What brought the connection to mind was the news that New Jersey legislators have banned smoking in indoor public places, meaning virtually all of the state's bars and restaurants. Okay, let's ban secondhand smoke, but imagine glorious black and white film noir Hollywood without that gray haze, and imagine jazz in its night club heyday without that haze weaving a mood around the music. In Birdland and the Village Gate, Basin Street East, and the Five Spot, the haze of smoke was as much a part of the nocturnal ambience as the spotlight on the bandstand and the tinkle of ice, and of course the music itself.

My memory of John Coltrane at the Village Gate is of a heroic figure submerged in so much smoke that he almost seemed to be striving against it as he played, embattled by it; at the same time, the smoke seemed to be at one with the tide of sound lifting him to each new plateau of amazing playing, as if it were being beaten into visibility by drummer Elvin Jones's rolling thunder and pianist McCoy Tyner's relentless barrage of block chords. Cigarette smoke was the element they were performing in and you can see it in Romare Bearden's depictions of the jazz club life. Smoke is not just forming the element, it's giving its essence to the artist's style, his whole approach to the scene he's trying to capture.

Visual Jazz is the title of a documentary about Bearden narrated by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis that effectively illustrates the relation of his art and his methods to jazz, but the association is almost too easy when you're talking about an African American artist who loved the music, hung out with the musicians, and even wrote and published songs like "Sea Breeze," which was recorded by Billy Eckstine. It would have been downright unnatural if jazz had not entered into his art.

But there's a lot more to Romare Bearden than his affinity for jazz. His work encompasses the African American experience, from his roots in North Carolina ("I never left Charlotte except physically") to growing up at the center of the Harlem Renaissance and eventually finding a studio in the Apollo Theatre building, The late August Wilson, whose play The Piano Lesson was actually inspired by Bearden's painting of the same name, credited him for presenting "black life &on its own terms, on a grand and epic scale." Like any artist of stature, however, his reach takes in far more than the milieu he knows best. That's why Bearden saw painting as "an adventure. You take what you find."

The exhibit's title comes from the artist himself: "When I conjure these images they are of the present for me, because the artist is &a kind of enchanter in time." In fact, some of the most enchanting images in the show have nothing to do with jazz; neither do the style and look of the screenprints based on scenes from the Odyssey, which make a lively contrast to the ponderous works in the Princeton Art Museum's "Legacy of Homer" exhibition.

Still, it's hard to avoid the jazz connection when you hear the sound of the music as you walk down the steps into the Wachovia Gallery. It makes you recall how it felt walking down to one of those smoky jazz cellars into the excitement of a set already in progress. Midway down the stairs at the museum you encounter the show's first image, a big lithograph called Jazz, and as in all Bearden's depictions of the night club scene, the players loom at you like creations of the atmosphere.

The presence of smoke as a determining element is most obvious in Introduction of a Blues Queen, where the predominant color is an ashy gray trailing into white like the residue of the darker shadows on either side of the bandstand. This appears to be the only work where the subject is a big band rather than a combo. If not for the column of yellow light spilling down on her you might not even see the singer. She's barely there, a hint of brown face and brown arms around a microphone stand. The most dominant figure is actually the drummer, who is raised above the rest and has the lion's share of that yellow column of light. He's holding his drumsticks as a gunfighter might hold a pair of six-shooters. He clearly seems to be executing the dynamic of the "introduction."

Look at the jazz imagery after one of the bright, clearly defined color silkscreens from the Odyssey series and it's hard to believe the same artist created them. In Bearden's night club the musicians are dearticulated, the colors sloppy and free, at once in your face and vague, everything flowing, in motion, happening, By contrast, the static action in works like The Siren Song and Cattle of the Sun God has a primal quality, as if the stick figures had been borrowed from an ancient wall painting; yet the effect is as cool and contemporary as an image from a graphic novel. Rather than staging his Odyssey in Homer's domain, Bearden moves it to Africa and turns the Greeks into Africans. And there's no smoke, no haze: everything's clearly defined, no forms or colors flowing into one another as they are in Bopping at Birdland where the bandstand is submerged in the orange light pouring over the tenor man while the bassist, seems to be made of blue smoke.

How strange then, that with all this visual excitement blaring like live music on the walls of the Wachovia Gallery, and with actual jazz playing from the television monitor soundtrack of A Life of Stories, another film about Bearden featuring Wynton Marsalis, the big room is silent and empty. Not a single person showed up to see and be dazzled by the works on the wall, and I was there for a full hour on a Saturday afternoon. I hope this was only because the exhibit has been on for almost two months. It probably also has to do with the hefty charge, $6.50 museum admission and an extra $4 to see the art of Romare Bearden, art that should definitely be seen, particularly by African Americans of any age, but especially the young. To the museum's credit, they now are offering free admission to servicemen and women along with members of their immediate family. Museum hours are Tuesday through Friday 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday noon to 5 p.m. Again, admission for adults is $6.50; seniors $6; students/children age 6 to 18: $4. Children under 6: Free.

Return to Top | Go to Auto Review