<i>Maudell Sleet’s Magic Garden</i>
Authors: Thomas B. Cole
Journal: JAMA (2014)

This lush, vegetal collage by theAmerican artist Romare Bearden (1911-1988) commemorates a generous neighborwith a green thumb.As a child Bearden spent summerswithhisgrandparents inCharlotte,NorthCarolina,andthe pleasantmemoryof the city’s backyardgardens lingeredonhis mind. Although Bearden lived most of his life in the northern UnitedStates,hesaidhenever leftCharlotte, exceptphysically. Inhisseventhdecadehecalledtomindthewarmdaysofhisyouth and a woman down the street who shared the produce of her gardenwithfriends.Herememberedhername—MaudellSleet— andwhenhethoughtofherplantingbedshecouldstill smell the flowers and taste the blackberries. In Maudell Sleet’s Magic Garden, Ms Sleet wears a big hat to shade herself from the eveningsun.Shekneels intothevegetation,twistingediblesoff their stemsand laying themgently inherbasket.Amid theexplosion of blooms, her cool blue dress is a resting place for the eye. Beardenwas born in Charlotte in 1911 andmovedwith his family toNewYork in 1914.Hismother,BessyeBearden,wasan editorandpoliticalorganizerwhonetworkedwith leading lights of the HarlemRenaissance. Bearden attended Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania, transferred to Boston University, andgraduated fromNewYorkUniversitywithadegreeineducation.Hebecameasocialworker,publishededitorial cartoons,andpaintedpicturesofdown-troddenfarmersandfactoryworkers; his family’s background in cultural activism and hisownexperienceassistingclients strugglingwithpoverty influenced the subjects and style of hiswork. In 1936he enrolled at theArt Students League and studiedwith theGermanexpatriateGeorgeGrosz,whosesatiricalpaintingsofarmyofficersand capitalists antagonized theauthoritiesof theWeimarRepublic. In 1945, Bearden exhibited “The Passion of Christ,” a narrative of the key events in the life of Jesus of Nazareth (JAMA cover, December 25, 2013), and in the same year he joined the SamuelKootzGallery,whichalso sponsored theabstractpaintersAdolphGottlieb,WilliamBaziotes, andRobertMotherwell. Atthistimethetrendinpictorialcompositionwastowardabstract self-expressionandaway fromsocial consciousness, and consequentlyBearden, the socialworker and sonof anactivist, foundhimself isolatedthematicallyandstylistically.Unlikemost ofhiscontemporaries,hewasstillpaintingrecognizablehuman figures. In the abstract ambience of the Kootz Gallery, hewas a fishoutofwater,atraditionalistamongtheavant-garde.Heeventually left the gallery and sought out like-mindedpainters such as Stuart Davis,whowas known for his syncopated cityscapes, butgraduallyBeardenlost interest inpaintingaltogetherandbecameasongwriter. Inthe1950sherekindledhis interest inpaintingbystudyingWesternmasterpiecesandworkingwithaChinese calligrapher.Hebrieflyovercamehisantipathytoabstractionand painted some large abstract oils, but ultimately returned to figure compositions through themediumof collage. A collage is built up in layers, like a garden. Bearden’s collageswere constructedwithmagazine clippings, paper scraps, and swatches of fabric daubed with paint. He cut up photographic images of eyes,masks, and plantmaterial and pieced the fragments together tomake human shapes. The resulting figures are reminiscent of the fruit-and-vegetable portraits of the 16th-century painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo (JAMA cover, June 17, 2009), except the components of Arcimboldo’s faces are all to the same scale, whereas the fragments in Bearden’s workhavedifferentmagnificationsandmustbe readbyzooming in andout. Bearden’s collages are typically small—oftenno larger than a piece of stationery—but in 1964he enlarged a series of 28 collages to dimensions of up to 4 by 6 feet. By enlarging the images,hechanged their relationship to theviewer; the small collages registered as windows into another world, but in the process of enlargement his figures assumed lifesized dimensions and shared the viewer’s space. Bearden’s treatment of his AfricanAmerican subjectswas faultedforbeingstereotypicalandpatronizing,andhewascriticized for missing an opportunity to raise awareness for social change. Well-meaning allies encouraged him to create a new genreofAfricanAmerican art compatiblewith the goals of the civil rights movement, but he refused to be pigeon-holed. Althoughhewas sympathetic to the struggle for equality,he took abroadviewofaesthetic inclusiveness.Hedidnotconsiderhimself ablackartist but anartistwhohappened tobeblack.There isonlyoneart,hesaid,and its themesareuniversal.Hewasalso concerned that artmade for political purposesmight overlook thevalueof the individual. The figures inhis collageswerenot abstractionsbutcompositesof realAfricanAmerican facesharvested fromthepagesofmagazines.BeardenpresentedAfrican Americanculture as a cornucopiaof everydayexperiences and talents integral to American life. His compositionsweremade in the communal spirit, he said, of PieterBreugel’s paintingsof 16th-century Flemish citizens at work and at play. It was the sense of community that Beardenmissedmost about Charlotte. Although he moved away without putting down roots, he considered Charlotte his place of origin, and the city has since claimed him as one of its own. Last year Charlottepaidtribute toBearden’smemorybydedicatinganew park near the site of the house where he was born, and this summerRomareBeardenPark ishosting livemusic events and classes inyoga and tai chi. Inspiredby the settingsofhis paintings, thepark isdesigned for strollingandreflection,withcurving walkways, a green space, and a thriving vegetable garden named after Maudell Sleet.