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Lot Essay
In Romare Bearden’s Inscriptions at the City of Brass, the artist addresses a theme that has been the subject of countless folkloric, literary and artistic endeavors for thousands of years: One Thousand and One Nights, also known colloquially as Arabian Nights. Bearden approaches a specific story within the collection of tales that follows a quest to locate the mysterious City of Brass, a once great society in which the trappings of power and wealth act as a prophetic warning to the visitors. In Bearden’s interpretation, his collaged patterns and gold paint suggest rich fabrics and dazzling findings, all rendered in Bearden’s iconic flat pictorial plane. The result is a modern reflection of the art that has been created before him, and it positions Bearden within the company of art’s greatest masters who immortalized Biblical narratives, ancient folklore and Green and Roman mythology in their own bodies of work.
Bearden was not unfamiliar to artistic allegory. In 1977, he produced a series of twenty works with compositions based on stories from Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, a complement to a series of drawings based on The Iliad he created in the 1940s. Many of his other works recall more recent histories—rituals and ceremonies of the American South—rendered in rich symbolism and echoing allegorical content. For Bearden, building a bridge between classical mythology and his own African-American culture demonstrates a sense of universality and timelessness of the human condition. “Looking at his paintings, one sees more than subject matter. Ultimately it is not just Bearden’s North Carolina or Bearden’s Harlem or Bearden’s musicians or Bearden’s Odysseus but a Bearden stylization of an attitude toward human existence…” (A. Murray, Romare Bearden: 1970-1980, quoted by C. Rowell, “’Inscription at the City of Brass:’ An Interview with Romare Bearden” Callalloo, no. 36, Summer 1988, p. 438).
Bearden was not unfamiliar to artistic allegory. In 1977, he produced a series of twenty works with compositions based on stories from Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, a complement to a series of drawings based on The Iliad he created in the 1940s. Many of his other works recall more recent histories—rituals and ceremonies of the American South—rendered in rich symbolism and echoing allegorical content. For Bearden, building a bridge between classical mythology and his own African-American culture demonstrates a sense of universality and timelessness of the human condition. “Looking at his paintings, one sees more than subject matter. Ultimately it is not just Bearden’s North Carolina or Bearden’s Harlem or Bearden’s musicians or Bearden’s Odysseus but a Bearden stylization of an attitude toward human existence…” (A. Murray, Romare Bearden: 1970-1980, quoted by C. Rowell, “’Inscription at the City of Brass:’ An Interview with Romare Bearden” Callalloo, no. 36, Summer 1988, p. 438).