Romare Bearden: The Caribbean Dimension
Romare Bearden's radiantly hued and jazzily structured collages and paintings celebrating the rural South and Harlem are well known. But so grand and complexly detailed is his oeuvre, one crucial facet has been given short shrift: his Caribbean works. The professors Price now redress that omission in this bright and lively volume. Bearden's wife was born on the Caribbean island of St. Martin, and the couple lived there for much of the 1970s and 1980s, until his death in 1988. Bearden, an exemplary colorist, discovered a "new brilliance" beneath the tropical sun and in the most luminous of mediums, watercolors. He also took a more fluid approach to collage. Three breathtaking series dominate: one depicting "enchanted places," another focusing on Obeah rituals, and the third capturing the catharsis of carnival. The Prices have emulated Bearden's gift for assemblage by juxtaposing their illuminating commentary with that of earlier critics, Bearden's own writings, and the observations of the literature-loving artist's writer friends, including Albert Murray, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Derek Walcott.Donna SeamanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved