Carolina Memory (Tidings)

Inscriptions

Signed, in graphite, lower right: Romare Bearden; inscribed, in graphite, lower left: 13/125

Label

In fragmented forms and bright colors, Romare Bearden creates a scene of South Carolina, where he was born in 1911. Bearden would likely have had few memories of his time there, as his family soon moved to New York City during the Great Migration, the wave of African Americans who left the rural South for Northern cities. A train travels across the horizon line beneath a rainbow and soaring birds, indicating movement, transition, and new horizons. The train, a literal form of transportation, suggests progress, while the rainbow, a traditional biblical symbol, alludes to promise. What might this say about the nature of the journey and the artist’s relationship to it?

Bearden returns to a place in memory, its own sort of pilgrimage, while commenting on the physical pilgrimage made by a generation of African Americans. He invites us to examine the relationships between memory, migration, and choice as components of both personal journeys and larger sociocultural trends.

From the 2022 exhibition A Space for Dialogue 108, Journeys Beyond: Faces and Forms of Pilgrimage, curated by Emily Charland '19, Erbe Intern

Course History

ARTH 2, Introduction to the History of Art II, Joy Kenseth, Mary Coffey, Winter 2014

SART 31/SART 72, Painting II/III, Jennifer Caine, Winter 2020

AAAS 88.19, Contemporary African-American Artists, Michael Chaney, Summer 2021

Exhibition History

A Space for Dialogue 108, Journeys Beyond: Faces and Forms of Pilgrimage, Alvin P. Gutman Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover New Hampshire, August 27 - October 22, 2022.

Contemporary Graphics: New Acquisitions, Lower Jewett Corridor, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 12, 1980-June 10, 1981.

Exile from Eden, Graham Gund Gallery of Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, March 26-July 22, 2012.

Romare Bearden: Collages, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 24-April 12, 1998.

The Art of Romare Bearden: Recollections of Mecklenberg County, Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences, Staten Island , New York, September 20-December 30, 2001.

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Subjects