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DESCRIPTION:
During 1944-45, Romare Bearden produced a number of
watercolors and oil paintings that treated as their
subject the birth and death of Jesus. The artist saw
Christ as a profound metaphor for the condition of
African Americans. In his view, Black Americans were
suffering in the United States just as Jesus had at
the hands of the Romans. Although the Great Depression
and World War II had ended, racism was still very
deeply ingrained in American society. An excellent
example of Bearden's expression is the oil painting
"Christ Mocked By The Soldiers".
The
work depicts a dark-complexioned Jesus, who appears
only partially in the painting's upper left corner.
He is surrounded by a number of Roman soldiers who
crowd menacingly, even clawing at their captor. Christ,
seen as a small triangle, with only a portion of his
face shown is not the artist's main interest, although
everything in the painting is directed to Jesus. Rather,
Bearden presents dramatically the soldiers' act of
perpetrating their ridicule. The scene is almost consumed
with their lurid, brilliantly-colored helmets, uniforms
and weapons.
THE
ARTIST'S BACKGROUND: When Romare Bearden finished
his study at the Art Students League in New York,
he carefully explored three artistic forms: abstractionism,
Social Realism and Cubism. He had been an abstractionist
from the start, but now he became more serious about
Social Realism, inspired in part by his study with
George Grosz, as well as his background as a cartoonist.
If the condition of African Americans was his thematic
interest, in this instance viewed through the experience
of Jesus, he now found in Cubism a formula for expressing
his views. Cubism's geometric grid and prismatic sense
of color were especially appealing to him during this
phase of his development. These appeals would undoubtedly
contribute to the artist's later work with collage
that emerged as his lasting and more familiar output.
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