"The phrase "prevalence of ritual" was first used in relation to this and three other 1964 collages: Conjur Woman as an Angel, Tidings, and Baptism. The conjure woman (which Bearden consistently spelled "conjur"), a spirit figure in southern African-American culture, moved north as part of the Great Migration and reappears frequently in Bearden's work. She is called upon to prepare love potions, cure illnesses, and assist with personal problems."--Text from nga.gov (see link).

"In addition to reproducing examples of Bearden's well-known collages, photostats, and watercolors, The Art of Romare Bearden includes paintings in gouache and oil, murals, book illustrations, costume designs, and his only known sculpture. Much of this art has been culled from private collections and is rarely seen. Fine's definitive essay, based on new research, is accompanied by shorter essays on the artist's European and African sources, his own writings, and contemporary criticism of his art."--BOOK JACKET.

Foreword by Bridget Moore. Text by Robert G. O'Meally.

By the time of his death in 1988, Romare Bearden was most widely celebrated for his large-scale public murals and collages, which were reproduced in such places as Time and Esquire to symbolize and evoke the black experience in America. As Mary Schmidt Campbell shows us in this definitive, defining, and immersive biography, the relationship between art and race was central to his life and work -- a constant, driving creative tension. Bearden started as a cartoonist during his college years, but in the later 1930s turned to painting and became part of a community of artists supported by the WPA. As his reputation grew he perfected his skills, studying the European masters and analyzing and breaking down their techniques, finding new ways of applying them to the America he knew, one in which the struggle for civil rights became all-absorbing. By the time of the March on Washington in 1963, he had begun to experiment with the Projections, as he called his major collages, in which he tried to capture the full spectrum of the black experience, from the grind of daily life to broader visions and aspirations. Campbell's book offers a full and vibrant account of Bearden's life -- his years in Harlem (his studio was above the Apollo theater), to his travels and commissions, along with illuminating analysis of his work and artistic career. Campbell, who met Bearden in the 1970s, was among the first to compile a catalogue of his works. An American Odyssey goes far beyond that, offering a living portrait of an artist and the impact he made upon the world he sought both to recreate and celebrate.

In Mounting Frustration Susan E. Cahan uncovers the moment when the civil rights movement reached New York City's elite art galleries. Focusing on three controversial exhibitions that integrated African American culture and art, Cahan shows how the art world's racial politics is far more complicated than overcoming past exclusions.

In this sixth book of the Dropping in on... series, Puffer lands in New York City to interview the famous artist Romare Bearden who uses a variety of media to make his unique images with family, urban life, and music themes. 32 pages, hardcover.

A train journey in Romare Beardens childhood, inspired by one of his collage paintings

From Process to Print: Graphic Works by Romare Bearden celebrates the etchings, aquatints, collagraphs, photo projections, lithographs, and screenprints of one of America's most important twentieth-century artists. From Process to Print accompanies the traveling exhibition of the same title organized by the Romare Bearden Foundation, a New York-based nonprofit organization established in 1990 to preserve, perpetuate, and make publicly accessible Bearden's rich artistic and intellectual legacy through its programs. More than seventy-five full-color reproductions demonstrate Bearden's printmaking process as he worked and reworked particular images, themes, and techniques; illuminate how his thinking and approaches were shaped through collaborations with master printmakers, especially Robert Blackburn; and evidence Bearden's extraordinary facility for weaving into every art form a rich tapestry of literary, biblical, mythological, popular-culture, and Western and non-Western themes that were informed by his African American cultural experiences. Included are prints based on collages, such as the Odysseus series and The Piano Lesson. Also featured are his highly acclaimed works The Family and The Train, which Bearden reworked in several media through photographic processes and changes in technique, scale, and color. The essay by Mary Lee Corlett thoroughly examines Bearden's graphic oeuvre, discussing the artist's methods and revealing him as a fearless experimenter and innovator in various print techniques. Interviews with renowned printmakers Mohammad Omer Khalil and Kathleen Caraccio, both of whom worked with Bearden, offer valuable insights into the artist's methods.

Includes African American artist profiles, offers an examination of the social and cultural context of every type of art form from painting to performance art, and looks at the role of the Black artist

The first book to examine how the South served as a source of inspiration throughout Bearden's career.