Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections presents 90 works from the full span of the artist's career, drawing on the Mint Museum's and other public and private collections of Bearden's work. As well as numerous stylistic influences, from African, European and Chinese art, this new volume focuses on how his childhood in North Carolina served as a key source of inspiration for him throughout his life. Bearden recorded the notions of ritual, and the celebration of a lost way of life, as families like his own dispersed across the urban centres of the north east. Colour plates from the accompanying exhibition are presented throughout four essays by leading Bearden scholars. These include Dr Leslie King-Hammond, who focuses on the feminist component in his art, as well as the role of complex iconographic features such as trains and birds, as possible metaphors for God in the machine and the means of deliverance to a new life. AUTHOR: Carla Hanzal, curator, Mint Museum of Art Dr Jae Emerling, associate professor of Modern Contemporary Art at University of North Carolina Glenda Gilmore, professor of History at Yale University Dr Leslie King-Hammond, graduate Dean Emeritus at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MCIA), and founding director of the Center for Race and Culture at MICA Mary Lee Corlett, research associate at the National Gallery of Art, Washington SELLING POINTS: A significant development in the wider understanding of the sources and inspiration behind much of Bearden's art Focuses on a largely unstudied area of the artist's work, his recollections and memories of his southern childhood Features selections from his The Prevalence of Ritual series, which combine a sense of durability with emphasized distortions ILLUSTRATIONS: 140 colour
