Spring Way 1964

Romare Bearden made this collage, Spring Way, from paper and board. Can you imagine him shuffling, layering, pasting? There’s something about collage: he wasn’t daunted by the canvas, the white. Instead, Bearden collected fragments – of images, textures, colors – and arranged them to create a world. A face peers out from the architecture, a figure looms on the right, and bold flashes of red disrupt the urban gray. I wonder what he was thinking, arranging these found elements, coaxing them into conversation? The pinks and blacks play with the sepia bricks, creating a rhythm like jazz. Bearden, like all of us, was in conversation with the art of his time, maybe recalling Kurt Schwitters or Hannah Höch. Artists are always talking to one another, across generations. They build on each other's experiments, learn from their mistakes, and push the boundaries of what’s possible. Like a jazz riff, there’s improvisation but based on something, not out of nowhere.