Jennifer Sanchez: Collage Mastah

Of the Blues: Kansas City 4/4, 1974, mixed media collage on board 44" x 50"

a few years ago i interviewed for a job at the Romare Bearden Foundation. i can't remember what the job was; some entry level assistant bullshit i'm sure. i didn't care, i just wanted the opportunity to be surrounded by his greatness. i didn't get the job. this show at Michael Rosenfeld Art really had some choice pieces - highlights below.

Profile/Part II, The Thirties:Uptown Sunday Night Session, 1981, mixed media collage on board, 44" x 56"

The Train Whistles, 1979, mixed media collage on Masonite, 31" x 39 15/16"

Morning Train to Durham, 1981, mixed media collage on board, 18" x 13 3/4"

excerpts from the press release:

...collage, the medium through which Bearden arrived at his mature style. Created between 1964 and 1983, the twenty-one works in the exhibition exemplify Bearden’s exceptional talent for storytelling as well as his mastery of the medium’s fragmentation of form and space.

In the early 1960s, he turned to collage in “an attempt to redefine the image of man in terms of the black experience.” Cutting and pasting photographs, paper, fabric, newspaper, and magazines, Bearden often added gouache, ink, pencil, and oil to his kaleidoscopic surfaces, creating dazzling compositions that focused on themes as expansive as his own talent. He redefined the image of humanity not in terms of “the black experience,” but black experiences—rural and urban, African, American, and Caribbean.

The works in this exhibition reflect the artist’s belief that “art is made from other art.” This idea is literally present in the act of collage-making—taking images, colors, and forms out of one context, altering them, and juxtaposing them with other pre-existing images, colors, and forms to create something new.