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Dr. Stroman's other artwork

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by VICTORIA L. VALENTINE on Sep 6, 2019 * 11:58 pm

LOS ANGELES-A master storyteller, Ernie Barnes (1938-2009) painted from experience. He captured the brawn of football and the quotidian of life in the segregated South.

His representational images depict what he saw growing up in Durham, N.C., where black people gathered for communion and competition on porches and basketball courts, in pool halls and churches. They also document his years as an athlete on college and pro teams, and experiences as a full-time artist living in Los Angeles, where he continued to connect with people in the sports world and added figures from Hollywood, the music industry, and elected officials, to his nexus.

Grounded in narratives, both personal and universal, his paintings are distinguished by a lively sense of action and motion and convey real joy and dignity.

While Barnes centered the African American community in his work, his subjects were markedly diverse in terms of race. His sports images portray an array of athletes. When he moved to a primarily Jewish neighborhood in Los Angeles, his new surroundings were reflected in some of his paintings.

Grounded in narratives, both personal and universal, his paintings are distinguished by a lively sense of action and motion and convey real joy and dignity. While Ernie Barnes centered the African American community in his work, his subjects were markedly diverse in terms of race.

An inveterate sketcher, Barnes worked hard at mastering his portrayal of the human body and its complex form. He captured his subjects in a neo-mannerist style. His elongated figures, both lithe and muscular, exude energy and movement. This signature approach is exemplified in "The Sugar Shack," his most celebrated and iconic painting.

Barnes is the rare artist whose most popular work is recognized from television. "The Sugar Shack" (1976) was regularly featured on Norman Lear's 1970s sitcom "Good Times."

The memorable painting depicts a fascinating scene, evoking a rural juke joint with its exposed rafters and densely populated dance floor. Unbridled, men and women move and contort their bodies in response to the live music and each other. The rhythm, energy, and heat is palpable. That night looks like a good time.

The inspiration for the painting was a dance at the Durham Armory, a local space where the likes of Chubby Checker, Bo Diddley, and even Duke Ellington performed. Barnes made the painting based on a childhood memory. In 1952, the artist snuck into the Armory. He was 13 years old at the time. Recalling the scene, Barnes has said, "It was the first time my innocence met with the sins of dance." More than two decades later, he translated what he saw that night onto canvas.

"The Sugar Shack" is showcased in "Ernie Barnes: A Retrospective," which is on view at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles through this weekend. Curated by Bridget R. Cooks, associate professor of African American studies and art history at the University of California at Irvine, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity see a broad selection of works by Barnes.

The retrospective features art and objects exploring his life and work. More than 50 works made between 1962 and 2007 are on view-paintings of athletes, a drum major, community gatherings, and radiant women. The retrospective follows "The North Carolina Roots of Artist Ernie Barnes," which was recently on view at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh for nearly a year (June 29, 2018-May 27, 2019). The two exhibitions are the first to survey the work of Barnes since his death, a decade ago in 2009.

THE EXHIBITION at CAAM begins with a painting the artist took three decades to finish. "Stored Dreams" (1962-1994) encapsulates his two careers.

It's a rare Barnes painting that doesn't include a figure. The still life depicts a wood shelf piled with his No. 61 football helmet and cleats, an art history book, a gold trophy cup holding a couple of paint brushes, and correspondence cherished enough to be tacked up in his locker. The envelope is addressed to Barnes via the San Diego Charges and the sender is "Ms. Bernie Gradney," who many years later became the artist's third wife. (When Barnes was playing for the Chargers from 1960-62, he was married to his first wife.)

There are also personal objects and ephemera on display. The artist's paintbrushes, palette, and football helmet are showcased. Splotched with paint, the wooden chair Barnes used in his studio, a fixture in his workspace dating back to the 1970s, is also displayed.

The retrospective is presented in one large gallery with two freestanding walls in the middle. A pair of vitrines on one side of the room displays Ebony magazines from 1973 and 1998 with coverage of Barnes, a sketch for the movie "Car Wash," dated 1975, and a circa 1974-75 photography proof sheet with images of the artist with "Good Times" actor Jimmy "JJ" Walker, among other documentary materials. (In addition to "The Sugar Shack" being featured on "Good Times," Barnes created the works JJ "painted" on the show.)

As the exhibition unfolds, key themes emerge-the artist's love of sports and interest in music, the influence of his Southern upbringing, and the powerful manner in which he depicts a panoply of women.

As the exhibition unfolds, key themes emerge-the artist's love of sports and interest in music, the influence of his Southern upbringing, and the powerful manner in which he depicts a panoply of women.

FOOTBALL IS THE FOCUS of many Barnes paintings, but his interest in sports extended far beyond the gridiron. He captured boxing, ice hockey, polo, tennis, and gymnastics. One side of the gallery is devoted to these works.

His paintings of athletes, from bulky boxers to slim tennis players, highlight his talent for exploring the capabilities of the body-its strengths, speed, flexibility, and fatigue.

"Being an athlete helped me to formulate an analysis of movement. Movement is what I wanted to capture on canvas more than anything else. I can't stand a static canvas," Barnes told Dave Price in an interview for the series "Here's The Story" on TV Land.

"Title IX" (1999) depicts three female soccer players intertwined and suspended off the ground, their legs in the air above their heads as they struggle to claim a loose ball. Rhythmic gymnastics is the subject of another work, one of five paintings Barnes created when he served as the official sports artist for the 1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles.

Barnes captured basketball scenes, too-pick-up games in his hometown on outdoor courts with peach baskets as hoops and in his adopted hometown in a crowded NBA arena where celebrities lined the court.

Writing about the exhibition for the Hollywood Reporter, Kareem Abdul-Jabar described Barnes's paintings as "magnificent and masterful" and said they gave him a "surge of joy and communal dignity."

The former Los Angeles Laker is a fan and a subject. "Fast Break" was commissioned by the Lakers in 1987. The Lakers won their 10th NBA title that year over the Boston Celtics, the defending champions. In the painting, Barnes depicts Abdul-jabar, Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Michael Cooper, and Kurt Rambis-the starting five-running down the court. All the players are mid-stride, feet in mid-air, including the Celtics. The ball is airborne and the arena is packed.

In the article, Abdul-Jabar writes about the individual and group pride that undergirds Barnes's work.

"The four of us who are black and in the foreground seem to be communicating telepathically, as if we understood what this game-what all games-meant to us individually and to other African Americans. That we were playing for all of us," Abdul-Jabar writes.

"This same sense of individual elation at pushing the limits of the body, while at the same time pushing how the world sees what we are capable of, is a hallmark of most of his sports paintings, many of which are in this exhibit."

"This same sense of individual elation at pushing the limits of the body, while at the same time pushing how the world sees what we are capable of, is a hallmark of most of his sports paintings, many of which are in this exhibit." - Kareem Abdul-Jabar

POWERFUL IMAGES of women stand out in the retrospective. In "Room Full A'Sistahs" (1994), Barnes features nine women in a stylish modern living room. Gathered for tea, they are having a grand time, laughing uproariously with their arms stretched high into the air. The artist's depiction of the joyful moment demonstrates a real reverence for women, their beauty, diverse body types, and interiority. This attention and interest in their lives and experiences can be seen in many other paintings in the show.

Exploring the physical strength of women beyond the context of sports, "My Miss America" (1970) is a powerful and moving depiction. This woman has a formidable presence. She's regal and muscular. If she has to carry the load, she can do so, literally and metaphorically.

"My Miss America" is in CAAM's collection. Barnes composed his subject like a pyramid-broad at the base, tapered at the peak. The folds of her dress give her a monumental, sculptural quality-a sense of permanence. Holding her shopping bags wide at her sides, her figure narrows above her rounded hips, and continues to slim past her waste and shoulders. Her head is the pinnacle. She holds her chin up, with her eyes closed basking in the golden glow that surrounds her.

Across his oeuvre, Barnes paints his subjects with their eyes closed, whether they are grooving at the sugar shack, suspended in mid-air trying to connect with a loose soccer ball, or carrying a pair of shopping bags.

"I tend to paint everyone, most everyone, with their eyes closed because I feel that we are blind to one another's humanity so if we could see the gifts strengths and potentials within every human being then our eyes would be open," Barnes said in a 1990 CNN interview.

"I tend to paint everyone, most everyone, with their eyes closed because I feel that we are blind to one another's humanity so if we could see the gifts strengths and potentials within every human being, then our eyes would be open." - Ernie Barnes

Broaching the issue of race, "Window Wishing" (1993) is subtle. Three women stand side-by-side before a store window looking up at a trio of mannequins outfitted in fashionable designer ensembles. Two of the women are white. They wear dresses and hats. The third woman is black and she has on a maid's uniform. One can imagine a few narratives explaining the scene.

Confronting racism head on, "Study for Walk in Faith" (2000) is a contemporary counterpart to "Miss America." Barnes revisited the same female figure 30 years later. Here she is less muscular, but no less regal. Whereas the woman in "Miss America" steels herself against undisclosed forces, in the more recent painting, the subject holds her haloed head high and forges ahead with an obvious onslaught surrounding her.

At first glance, with its bright colors and grid composition, "Study for Walk of Faith," strikes observers as an artful, representational image. More acutely, it is one of triumph and unflappability. Upon closer examination, one sees the subject is striding toward the viewer against a backdrop of niceties (words and symbols such as teacher, apple, sista, wife, hope, mama, African American) outweighed by a slew of woman-hating and racist slurs (witch, jigaboo, slave, ho, ape, coon, bitch, darkie).

BORN IN DURHAM, N.C., Barnes grew up in a community called "The Bottom" with his parents and younger brother. (He also had an older half brother.) The artist was a shy child who occupied himself with drawing. In "From Pads to Palette," his illustrated biography published in 1995, Barnes said he had a better quality of life than other "Negro" children in his neighborhood. Anything he asked for he got. Family meals were plentiful. His father was a shipping clerk at a tobacco company and his mother did domestic work, supervising the household of a wealthy lawyer.

"I liked him because on the occasions when I accompanied my mother to work, he would call me into his study and allow me to look through his art books. He would tell me about the various schools of art, his favorite painters, the museums he visited and other things my mind couldn't quite comprehend at age seven. But he seemed to enjoy educating me as much as I enjoyed his books," Barnes wrote.

"I found it difficult to understand why he, as a member of the school board, voted against school desegregation when the bill first come to the table. He told my mother he didn't think "'the Whites were ready.'"

Barnes attended segregated schools and, in high school, was captain of the football team and a state champion in shot put. He earned a full athletic scholarship to what is now North Carolina Central University (NCCU), an HBCU, where sculptor Ed Wilson was his art instructor and chairman of the art department.

At NCCU, Wilson advised Barnes to draw what he knew. In "Pads to Palette," Barnes recalled Wilson's advice: "If you are going to be an artist, you've got to work from your experiences. When you're on the field check out what's going on around you in that muggy conflict. Feel the solidity of those bumps, pay attention to what you're going through, and then tell me about it."

On another occasion, when Barnes was bereft of ideas and couldn't figure out what to paint, Wilson took him out of class and drove him to his neighborhood.

"Art is about life and how you feel about it," Wilson told him. "It's not something that's separate and apart from life. You serve as being a kind of a reporter of your discoveries and opinions about life. Don't ever tell me that you don't know what to paint. That's like telling me you have no opinion, that you don't think or feel about anything."

Barnes left NCCU before graduating. In 1960, he was selected in the tenth round of the NFL draft. An offensive lineman, he played five seasons of professional football with the New York Titans, San Diego Chargers, and Denver Broncos, before concentrating on his practice in Los Angeles. Barnes painted full-time from the mid-1960s to 2008.

The paintings on view in the retrospective show Barnes took his instructor's suggestions to heart. Throughout his career, he painted what he saw, what he experienced, and what he cared about.

Luz Rodriguez, a longtime assistant to Barnes who serves as trustee of his estate, said he fell ill in 2008, during the holidays. A few months later, he died of myeloid leukemia. He was 70.

"Being an athlete helped me to formulate an analysis of movement. Movement is what I wanted to capture on canvas more than anything else. I can't stand a static canvas." - Ernie Barnes

A HANDFUL OF PAINTINGS in the exhibition are housed in weathered wood frames. The treatment is a tribute to the artist's father. In 1966, Barnes was preparing for his first gallery show at Grand Central Galleries in New York City. He was finishing the last painting when he got a devastating call from his mother. His father was in the hospital after having a stroke. His speech was impaired and his left side was paralyzed.

Barnes drove across the country, from California to North Carolina, to see his father. In "Pads to Palette," he said he drove "straight through," arriving in two days. The artist visited his father daily, splitting his time each day between the hospital and framing his work in the family's backyard. He had an epiphany when saw the aging fence his father once kept pristine.

"One day, I placed a painting against the fence and stood away and had a look. I was startled at the marriage between the old wood fence and the painting," Barnes wrote. "It was perfect. A tribute to Daddy. I framed all of the paintings with that old wood fence. Daddy's fence would hug my paintings in a prestigious New York gallery. That would have made him smile." Barnes never told his father about the meaningful framing. He died before he got a chance to do so.

I framed all of the paintings with that old wood fence. Daddy's fence would hug my paintings in a prestigious New York gallery. That would have made him smile." - Ernie Barnes

"From Pads to Palette" concludes with his first show. (Football was the subject of all with works in the exhibition.) Paintings framed in wood from the fence in Durham, were featured in that inaugural gallery exhibition in New York City. Later, Barnes framed additional paintings such as "Anniversary" (1980) and "Double Dutch" (1989), in a similar fashion, but not with wood sourced from his father's fence. Rodriguez said, "in subsequent years, he would use weathered wood he found or from his own yard to frame certain paintings."

THE NEWEST PAINTING in the retrospective reinvents the use of wood planks for framing. "Screen Door" is a work in progress from 2007. It's a unique work that Barnes envisioned as a scene viewed through an open door. The large vertical painting depicts a man and women embracing. Her back is to the viewer. Green painted and weathered wood frames the image in the manner of a wooden screen door, complete with handle.

The painting is unfinished. Rodriguez told me by email that Barnes worked on many paintings simultaneously. To complete this one, he intended to use an extremely thin paintbrush to overlay the image with a mesh screen.

Nearby, "The Sugar Shack" hangs in a row of paintings about halfway down one side of the gallery. A modest rope and stanchion-style set up in front of the painting distinguishes it from the many other works in the exhibition. The symbolic barrier does little to guard the painting but does emphasize its prized status. The famous painting is one of many scenes inspired by Barnes's hometown.

"The Sugar Shack" became familiar to television viewers and music lovers. A version of the artwork illustrates the cover of Marvin Gaye's 1976 album "I Want You." Two other paintings in the exhibition appear on album covers, too.

In "Late Night DJ" (1980), Barnes depicts a woman in red-dress, cap and lipstick-spinning records. With a fur-collar coat resting on her shoulders, she has a cocktail at the ready. Curtis Mayfield commissioned Barnes to create the image for the cover of his album "Something to Believe In."

Barnes explained how "Late Night DJ" came about in an interview with a Japanese outlet, called Soul Museum. He said: "The story behind the painting pertains to one very rainy night in Atlanta, Georgia. A friend picked me up from the airport. I realized that many plans and romantic evenings were probably broken because of the terrible weather. On the radio was a male DJ. His voice didn't match the climate of that evening. I felt it should have been a woman so that's what I presented. Who could better soothe the listeners than a woman?"

In a 1982 painting, a young man stands alone in a darkened room facing a vintage radio with his arms, exaggerated in length, held high in the air in the manner of a conductor. Called "The Maestro," the image appears on the cover of The Crusaders 1984 album "Ghetto Blaster."

Similar to Los Angeles artist Charles White before him, who illustrated album covers from the 1950s to 1970s, most of them jazz, Barnes collaborated with several other musical artists, creating art for seven albums between 1976 and 2000.

When times were lean, the Los Angeles Times reported in 1992, "African American artists, such as Charles White, provided him with inspiration to persevere." (Another, Samella Lewis, was among those who bought paintings from Barnes. She once owned another version of "The Maestro," circa 1978, not included in the CAAM show.)

A SUCCESSFUL ARTIST in his lifetime, Barnes carved out a unique career path in which he eventually thrived commercially. Throughout the years, the African American community embraced him and African American collectors, celebrities, musical artists, and sports figures purchased his work. He counted among his collectors Jack Palance, Harry Belafonte, Ethel Kennedy, Howard Cossell, Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, Sylvester Stallone, and dozens of others among the who's who of earlier generations.

He collaborated with the Olympics, received commissions from the NBA, NFL, record labels, universities, and corporations, and sustained his practice with an entrepreneurial spirit.

In 1971, Barnes organized a touring exhibition of 35 paintings that he said "not only defined how and in what ways black was beautiful, but it gave a sense of pride a sense of community." From 1972 to 1979, "The Beauty of the Ghetto" traveled to major U.S. cities, where his celebrity supporters and local elected officials hosted the shows and new collectors from across the country were introduced to his work.

Barnes received awards and accolades from the sports world, but meaningful recognition and critical acknowledgment from the art world eluded him. Early in his career, exposure on "Good Times" broadened his audience but failed to draw the attention of art critics or art historians.

Ernie Barnes received awards and accolades from the sports world, but meaningful recognition and critical acknowledgment from the art world has eluded him.

"He's not a part of art history," Cooks told the Guardian newspaper. "Barnes is not someone in any art history book that I own or have seen, but he has influenced thousands of people through the popular vehicles he accessed for his work."

THAT POPULAR SUPPORT for Barnes from the sports world and the entertainment industry and appeal across generations is evident throughout the gallery. A scan of the exhibition labels reveals an interesting group of individual and institutional collectors.

"Fast Break" is in the collection of the Los Angeles Lakers. The Los Angeles Athletic Club owns "The Maestro." Fast-rising Los Angeles artist Lauren Halsey was recently in residence at the downtown club. The Kinsey African American Art and History Collection owns "Final Study for the Drum Major" (2004). The Kinsey collection was established by Bernard and Shirley Kinsey, prominent African American collectors based in Los Angeles.

A former NFL player and coach, Hardy Nickerson contributed paintings from his collection to the exhibition and participated in the museum's related programming, speaking on a panel about the Barnes show. Nickerson met Barnes in 1993 and commissioned the artist to make a painting that expressed his aspirations to play professional football.

"Friendly Friendship Baptist Church" (1994) is a lively scene. The preacher, choir and band are clearly feeling the spirit. Nearly everyone in the pews is on their feet, except Nickerson and his cousin who remain seated. In the painting, Nickerson wears a No. 50 jersey and the two young boys have their noses buried in a football magazine.

"Late Night DJ" is from the collection of Ted Lange, the actor who played Isaac, the bartender on the 1970-80s television show "The Love Boat." Other paintings are on loan from singers Melissa Manchester and Ray Parker Jr.

A few paintings away, works are owned by a new generation. "Dance Studio" (2002) is from the collection of Rebecca and Troy Carter, the music manager, tech entrepreneur, and consultant to Prince's estate. "Ali" depicts the legendary boxing champion in the ring, gloves at the ready with his opponent looking defeated and on the verge of collapse. The boxing scene belongs to Derek Dudley. He runs Freedom Road Productions with Common and has a producer credit on Showtime's "The Chi."

Another work, "Study for Spoken Word" (2006), is a compelling departure in subject and style for Barnes. Here, the artist depicts a woman standing before a lectern, one hand on her hip, the other holding an open book aloft. She appears to be conducting a dramatic reading. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves fill the entire background. Toward the bottom of the painting the names of six historic African American authors are listed, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, and Langston Hughes.

The large, sepia-tone drawing is owned by The Dean Collection (Alicia Keys and Kasseem Dean, aka Swizz Beatz). The music industry couple has been increasingly active in the art world, recently showing their expansive collection of Gordon Parks photographs at Harvard University's Ethelbert Cooper Gallery at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Art, and also announcing plans to establish a music and arts center in upstate New York.

"Speaking with his collectors, I have uncovered many personal stories about Barnes' generosity of spirit. He touched many people through the emotional expression in his art, love of sports, the female form, and life in Los Angeles," Cooks told me via email.

"His collectors were his friends and his admirers. Many of them are songwriters and musicians. I think they felt a kinship with Barnes' skill as a storyteller through his art." CT
Curated by Bridget R. Cooks with Vida L Brown, visual arts curator and program manager at CAAM, "Ernie Barnes: A Retrospective" is on view at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, May 8-Sept. 8, 2019 TOP IMAGE: ERNIE BARNES, "The Sugar Shack," 1976 (acrylic on canvas, 36 in. x 48 inches). | Collection of Jim and Jeannine Epstein, © Ernie Barnes Family Trust
FIND MORE about Ernie Barnes on his website

WATCH a video about the life and work of Ernie Barnes from the NC Museum of History (It begins with a general museum introduction.)

BOOKSHELF
"Pads to Palette," is an autobiographical volume by Ernie Barnes. Alongside illustrations of his work, the artist recounts his childhood in Durham, N.C., football experiences including the segregated AFL and early NFL years, and the start of his art career with his first gallery exhibition. Published in 2007, "A Tribute to Artist and NFL Alumni Ernie Barnes: His Art & Inspiration" commemorates a New York City exhibition hosted by Time Warner and the National Football League. A children's book, "Between the Lines: How Ernie Barnes Went from the Football Field to the Art Gallery," was published last year. Also, Shades of Color recently released a 2020 wall calendar featuring "the iconic art" of Barnes, published in collaboration with the artist's estate.

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Ernie Barnes Retrospective Brings Renewed Attention to African American Artist Who Found Fame After Playing Pro Football

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by VICTORIA L. VALENTINE on Sep 6, 2019 * 11:58 pm LOS ANGELES-A master storyteller, Ernie Barnes (1938-2009) painted from experience. He captured the brawn of football and the quotidian of life in the segregated South.

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Dr. Stroman's art

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Romare Bearden (American, 1911-1988), "Profile/Part I, The Twenties, Mecklenberg County, School Bell Time," 1978, collage on board. (Kingsborough Community College, The City University of New York. © Romare Bearden Foundation/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Paul Takeuchi.)

ATLANTA - Romare (pronounced "ROH-mery") Bearden liked to wear a beret, had pale skin, and looked glabrous and jowly, like Nikita Khrushchev. Unlike Khrushchev, however, he was an artist - and African American.

Born in Charlotte in 1911, Bearden grew up mostly in Harlem. He was an only child, but he was hardly isolated. His mother was an activist, editor and board member; his parents' home was a hub of Harlem's black community. Fats Waller and Duke Ellington were regular presences in the young Bearden's life. As an adult, his friends included James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Billie Holiday, Hannah Arendt, Jacob Lawrence and Toni Morrison.

Bearden belonged in their company: No black artist of the 20th century accomplished more. His rich, incident-filled and (mostly) lucky life is as absorbing to contemplate as his brilliant, manifold art. So it made sense that Bearden, in 1977, was the subject of a New Yorker profile by a master of the form, Calvin Tomkins.

Bearden appears to have liked the profile. But the relationship between words and pictures is perennially uneasy and writers, especially good writers, often spur artists' competitive instincts. Having his life story narrated in a magazine prompted Bearden to try telling it himself in a series of collages and paintings that he called, with a nod to the New Yorker, "Profile."

This 93-year-old artist has been taking on racism and sexism for decades - and is finally getting her due

Bearden worked on the series between 1978 and 1981. He divided it into two parts. Both focused on episodes from his early years, which Tomkins's elegant narrative had skated over. The first part concentrates on his childhood in the South and in Pittsburgh (where he went to live, intermittently, with his grandmother); the second focuses on Harlem in the 1930s. Both parts are on display at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in a show called "Something Over Something Else."

You could come away assuming that Bearden grew up in poverty both in the rural South and around the steel mills of Pittsburgh. In fact, although he witnessed these worlds during extended stays, the reality was more complicated. As Bearden's friend Charles Alston said: "Romy was never a poor kid. He was straight out of the middle class, and the urban middle class at that."

The High show's title is taken from Bearden's words: "I really think the art of painting is the art of putting something over something else." The statement, which Tomkins quotes in his profile, speaks to Bearden's favored idiom of collage - the layering of one thing over another. And it points to his specific achievement: More than any artist I can think of, Bearden pulled collage away from its associations with modernist fragmentation and precious fussiness into something loose and capacious, yoked to storytelling, pulsing and rippling with all the layers of life.

But the phrase also carries a whiff of trickery and masquerade - "putting something over on someone." Bearden was a sophisticated storyteller - he relished the idea of the "unreliable narrator" - so he surely intended both associations.

Seeing the show, reading Tomkins's profile and poring over a new anthology, " The Romare Bearden Reader " - which includes a useful introduction by Robert O'Meally, and essays and reflections by Morrison, Ellison, August Wilson, Tomkins (the profile) and Bearden - renewed my love of this artist, who died of bone cancer complications in 1988.

The "Profile" collages have slyly suggestive captions. "Daybreak Express" shows a bedroom with a nude woman stretched out on her stomach. Behind her is a window through which we see a train puffing steam. The inscription reads: "You could tell not only what train it was but also who the engineer was by the sound of the whistle."

On its own, the image has an all-at-once clarity that makes verbal description feel labored. (I didn't tell you, for instance, that the woman's head rests in the crook of her elbow, nor that one eye looks out at the viewer, nor what kind of room it is, nor whether it is night or day outside; yet when you look at the picture, it takes just a second to register all of that.)

Still, words can do things that images can't. The inscription, with its double entendre and pungent specificity (were the horn-tooting habits of the train engineers really so distinct?) has a poetic concision that goes beyond the scope of images.

Throughout the series, Bearden sets up echoes, not only visually (women, windows and trains are repeating motifs) but verbally. "The last time I saw Liza was down at the station when I left for Pittsburgh on the 5.13," reads one inscription. Another says: "Sometimes at night I used to dream of being the one who was running the train." And a third: "The trains in the stories she told always ran North."

Beyond this roiling interplay between visual and verbal imagery, I love Bearden's "Profile" series (and his whole oeuvre) for the way it undermines the exhausted premises of 21st-century identity politics.

To grasp how, it's important to say first that Bearden could scarcely have been more engaged with black identity. Everything he made - most everything he did - had to do with telling the story of black life in the United States. He fought prejudice and promoted visibility for African Americans at every turn.

Bitter experience had taught him how cruel and arbitrary racial distinctions could be. An exceptionally talented pitcher, he had played on a professional "colored" team while studying in Boston. He was so good that, in 1932, he was invited to join the Philadelphia Athletics, a team that had won the World Series in 1929 and '30 and the American League pennant in '31. But accepting would have meant pretending he was white. (This was 15 years before Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier.) Bearden turned it down.

Like his mother, he was an activist. He had started out in art drawing political cartoons for the Afro-American newspaper. In 1963, he helped found a collective of black artists, the Spiral Group. He spent the 1960s organizing ambitious shows devoted to African American art. With Norman Lewis and Ernest Crichlow, he even started the Cinque Gallery, dedicated to black artists.

By then, he had "made it" as an artist; he wanted to help in every way he could. ("His phone never stops ringing," Chris Shelton, the gallery's first director, commented to Tomkins.)

Bearden once said that "an artist is an art lover who finds that in all the art that he sees, he sees something missing." For him, what was missing was the experiences, dreams and projections of his people. Today's prominent black artists, including Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas (whose collage aesthetic was heavily influenced by Bearden), Amy Sherald and Kehinde Wiley, are similarly motivated.

With a brass band blaring, artist Kehinde Wiley goes off to war with Confederate statues

Correcting this became Bearden's life's work. He wanted, he said in 1964, to "establish a world through art in which the validity of my Negro experience could live and make its own logic."

He succeeded magnificently, largely because he wasn't interested in simplifying reality. He would have loathed the idea of depleting the imprint life left on him just to make it fit the requirements of a political worldview. It would have betrayed his understanding of identity itself.

"We all live in a mask," he once said. "We all have a hundred different identities."

One of the best (and most brightly colored) collages in Part II of "Profile" illustrates this in ways that may be hard for contemporary viewers to wrap their heads around. It shows the black vaudeville mime artist, Johnny Hudgins, outside the Lafayette Theater.

Hudgins, who was nicknamed the Wah-Wah Man, often performed in blackface. This was not uncommon for black vaudeville performers (for all that we rightly condemn it now, blackface has a complicated history).

"He was my favorite of all the comedians," wrote Bearden in the accompanying inscription. "What Johnny Hudgins could do through mime on an empty stage helped show me how worlds were created on an empty canvas."

A black man in blackface is, if nothing else, an "unreliable narrator," which may have been part of what Bearden loved in Hudgins. In any case, one can imagine how an African American who was usually taken for white might have appreciated what Hudgins was up to, and the art he brought to his popular act.

Bearden took inspiration wherever he found it: George Grosz, Stuart Davis, Chinese painting, Picasso, Matisse, the Dutch masters, African art, Homer, Derek Walcott, jazz. His broad-mindedness was not just aesthetic. From childhood, he also straddled multiple modes of social existence. He instinctively felt, as Tomkins wrote, that "the path of separatism within a culture is basically self-defeating." He also understood that identity - everyone's identity - is layered.

The words we use today - "black," "white," "Latino," "Asian" - may be clear. And, God knows, we all crave clarity. But the reality of selfhood is cloudier, more contradictory and harder to parse than those constricting categories allow. In the end, that is not a misfortune. It is a solace (how hard it is to be one thing!).

Art, too, is a solace. It exists to remind us that we come, all of us, in many versions.

"Something Over Something Else": Romare Bearden's Profile Series at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta through Feb. 2. high.org

The dazzling Harlem Renaissance that flowered nearly a century ago celebrated in Ohio

Two revelatory exhibitions upend our understanding of black models in art

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Review | First the New Yorker profiled Romare Bearden. Then the artist and activist decided to tell his own story, in pictures.

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ATLANTA - Romare (pronounced "ROH-mery") Bearden liked to wear a beret, had pale skin, and looked glabrous and jowly, like Nikita Khrushchev. Unlike Khrushchev, however, he was an artist - and African American. Born in Charlotte in 1911, Bearden grew up mostly in Harlem. He was an only child, but he was hardly isolated.

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April is National Poetry Month, a celebration of poets and poetry that's been in place for 25 years.

Last month, as the U.S. grieved over attacks against Asian Americans, NPR's Morning Edition collected poems on how people grapple with the increased violence and discrimination.

Over 500 listeners shared powerful, poignant poems - in the form of a list beginning with the word "today." They showcased fear, anger, empathy and motivation to make the world a better place.

NPR's resident poet Kwame Alexander took lines from the submissions to create a community poem, "Today, I Am A Witness To Change." Contributors are credited at the bottom.
Today, I Am A Witness To Change
Today, I wake up tired
a tiredness that plagues me
soft grey hues, contrasting over a grieving landscape,
filled with many frigid hearts.

Today, I ache
I lay in the pre-dawn
Moonshadows on my window blinds
Contented kittens purring at my side.
On the radio, news of greater challenges
Challenges that require more than I can handle alone

An Asian-American died because of hate.
a child lost his mother.
Today we mourn
I cry and pray for the world.
I want the attacks to be called what they are: Terrorism.

Today I feel we need more than conversation
Let us take more than a moment of silence
Let us find our humanity
Let us remember
Let us take action

Today I hesitate
for the first time, I wonder if I should stay home and not walk the neighborhood.
it's not the weather or the virus - the day is beautiful
Today
I'm frozen
Terrified.
I cannot hide
This skin
This hair
These eyes.
I see the punch, punch, punch of a community at war.
Today I am a witness.
I rush past the jeering white boys that say I brought corona to America.
My soul is wary.

Today, a video call full of empty boxes
Stares at me, apprehensively.
Students locked behind a screen
Their hearts and minds
Severed
From one another.

Today, the headlines say March Madness
Today, I don't watch basketball.
The madness is in the streets.
In broad daylight.
On the concrete sidewalks of New York.
In the silence of bystanders.
It's in the textbooks. The classrooms. The family dinners. The lies we tell.

Today the rain falls
and falls
and falls
and falls.
a silent tear from a weeping woman.
Today, I will say their names
I will cancel class and try again tomorrow.

Today, a Chinese man travels back in time.
The hateful and racist words hurled at a lonely child emerges from buried memories
Today I offer a slice of my own wounded soul
to graft a love patch
A patchwork piece for a more perfect union

Today, I think about my best friend's Korean Mom,
if it was her kicked to the ground
in New York,
or punched in California,
or shot in Georgia.

Today I remember the idea
of America
as a melting pot
the past twelve years
looking over my shoulder
watching my back

The Steak and Shake waitress in 2006
Who outright refused to wait on me
Who threw the menu
In great disdain

The young woman in Alum Creek
Who was with her boyfriend
who Threw a stone at me
Because I was doing my Tai Chi
At the top of the 116 steps
That I loved to go up and down

I want to be somewhere
and nowhere at once
I cringe at our disunity
I stand back in awe of the never diminishing divisiveness
I cry for the misunderstood and those that misunderstand

Today I tell my youngest child that
when I was a child
I wished I was white
I was silent
I allowed people around me to mispronounce my name

Today the dragon bends
From western winds
Blown hot from valleys deep.
Scorched skies belie the spring.
Heads bowed. All weep.
Outside my window, the daughter bends to examine the fish in the pond,
slowly gliding out of their winter torpor. Her name means
celebration in Chinese. It also means blessing.

Today I remember the sacrifices of my grandmother
Her steely eyes that shed many tears
Her small, sinewy hands that clung to her children
Her diminutive feet that leapt over the ocean
Today, I will use her strength that courses through my veins.

Today I am witness to change
As I sit inside our bookstore,
arranging the carefully printed and bound
words of so many voices
I wonder who will welcome the truth

The Joy Luck Club
The Hungry Tide
Prairie Lotus
Pachinko
The Namesake

So many words
Each leaving an imprint
Like a grain of rice
Stockpiled and cataloged
knowledge gleaned, gathered
Empathy enhanced

Today I will ferry you across the troubled waters.
hold you close, in any way you crave.

Today, I think not only of the cold ignorance of man
but the small ember of warmth we transfer when we love.

Today, I rise.

Today, we stop telling lies.

I will stand.
I will speak.

I will stand.
I will speak.

Today, I will return to normal
Attending church
eating out
walking
being
because Today
we will persevere

This community poem was created using submissions by:

Frankie Wood-Black, Ponca City, Okla.

Andrew Ensor, Knoxville, Tenn.

Todd Gardner, Tallahassee, Fla.

Jessie Bergamini, League City, Texas

Therese Glowacki, Boulder, Colo.

Rosa Nam, Houston

Veronica Crane-Lindsey, Asheville, N.C.

Ernest Wong, Broomfield, Colo.

Ali Stephens, Bossier City, La.

Andrew Adams, Effingham, Ill.

Joshua Grove, Oregon City, Ore.

Matt Harr, Marietta, Ga.

Thazin Nu, Columbus, Ohio

Lisa Burgess, Kansas City, Mo.

Heidi Pennington, Harrisonburg, Va.

Anita Rao, Oakland, Calif.

Amanda Ladish, Fayetteville, Ariz.

Michelle Alumkal, Beacon, N.Y.

Christopher Standish, Windsor, Conn.

Rebecca Dodge, Midland, Texas

Sueño LeBlond, Brattleboro, Vt.

Chiara Andres, San Francisco

Lesly Sanocki, Beaverton, Ore.

Sydney Cottongim, Milwaukee, Wisc.

Sherwin Kendall, Deltona, Fla.

Marilyn Temkin, New York City

Lyn Pyle, Honolulu, Hawaii

Susan Mcclellan, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Kundai Chikowero, Goleta, Calif.

Karen Tan Hanson, Minneapolis

Donna Joyner, New Bern, N.C.

Natalie Truong, Davis, Calif.

Kari Cameron, Churchville, N.Y.

Jane Ujhazi, Bandon, Ore.

Christine P San Mateo, Calif.

Tim McCarthy, Fox Point, Wisc.

Wendy Tang, San Francisco

Unhei Chong, Washington, D.C.
Marc Rivers and Reena Advani produced and edited the audio story. Casey Noenickx produced for the Web.

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'Today, I Am A Witness To Change': A Crowdsourced Poem Against Anti-Asian Hate

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NPR's resident poet Kwame Alexander created a community poem from submissions that reflected on increased violence and discrimination against Asian Americans.

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Great article talking about Candyman and the various thematics throughout :-)

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What is Candyman about?

Chicago grad student Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) is researching urban legends when she stumbles across rumours of a hook-handed serial killer they call 'Candyman'. According to local legend, saying the name into a mirror five times causes him to appear from beyond the grave.

When Helen learns the killer lives in a nearby housing project, she goes looking for the man behind the myth. Unfortunately for her, she finds him.

This article unpacks the themes in Bernard Rose's 1992 horror film, Candyman - with spoilers.

The true(ish) story of Candyman

Candyman's genesis lies in a short story by British horror writer Clive Barker. That story, The Forbidden, provides the bones of director Bernard Rose's film adaptation. But as well as the story of a grad student sucked into the urban legends she's researching, the film weaves in true events and sharp social commentary.

At its core, Candyman is about the racial inequality that haunted Chicago's doomed Cabrini-Green social housing project. The estate provided affordable housing for working class African Americans after World War II. But what could have been a landmark in social equality was stymied by racist public policy that saw the estate fall into neglect, disrepair and hopelessness.

The film is rooted in this urban history (some of the film was shot on location here, too). It also references the real life murder of Ruthie Mae McCoy.

McCoy was killed in her home in the projects by burglars who used the narrow wall spaces to move between apartments. Her murderers did indeed 'come through the bathroom mirror'.

The movie adapts this for its Candyman myth, about a bogeyman who appears in mirrors and kills in cold blood.

But the significance of the reference is that those in social housing like Cabrini-Green really were sidelined and ignored economically, socially, and even when they called 911 and begged for help.

Inner city fright

So what's the source of terror in Candyman? Obviously there's the devilish spectre of Candyman himself (Tony Todd), along with whispered folk lore.

Candyman tells us he exists because of rumour. It's our whispers about him that keep him alive - just like any urban legend or superstition.

"I am the writing on the wall, the whisper in the classroom. Without these things, I am nothing."

But the film has a more waspish point to make. For the wealthy middle classes, especially cosseted white academics like Helen, true terror is having to look poverty in the eye instead of pushing it out of sight.

When Helen investigates McCoy's death at Cabrini-Green, she makes a shocking discovery. Her own condo in wealthy Lincoln Village is an exact replica of those at Cabrini-Green.

This is a rather tragic instance of mirroring. Cabrini-Green is shrouded in graffiti and the fug of unemployment while residents at Lincoln Park thrive. Yet the main difference between the buildings is their postcode.

As far as the film goes, the coincidence ties Helen to Cabrini-Green. It gives her a compelling reason to ' climb through the mirror ' into another reality (the ghetto she avoids seeing otherwise).

Why the film is relevant 30 years later

We can't get enough of boundaries. We zone our cities, while access to healthcare and education can be a postcode lottery: what you get depends on where you live. For those who have plenty, it can be hard to think about those who go without - so we don't look.

At the same time, we create urban legends and scary stories about transgressors who cross boundaries: immigrants, ethnic groups, the unemployed, trans and non-binary people. We recast these outsiders as bogeymen.

Perhaps we invest in these dehumanising narratives in part to assuage the guilt of ownership and privilege - and as an excuse not to help.

This underpins the Candyman film universe, too. 1990s Chicago has invisible boundaries that keep poor and wealthy people apart. It's a division which then as now is based on racial inequality and segregation.

The Cabrini-Green residents are all but invisible, just as their poverty goes largely unseen. They're deliberately ghettoised, so that the middle classes don't have to look at them.

Candyman proves the lie in such arbitrary boundaries. They mean nothing to him: he comes and goes through mirrors and walls just as he pleases. Through him, the inner city - and the horrors of injustice - bursts out of it ghetto limits and into Helen's field of vision.

This begs the question, does society fear bogeymen, poverty or Blackness? Perhaps it's a bit of everything.

Through the mirror and back again

Mirroring - plots and characters that are reversed or reflected in unexpected ways - are central to many stories (including 2010 psychothriller Black Swan). And it's abundant in Candyman.

Helen's condo is a replica of McCoy's, a grisly foreshadowing of Helen's fate.

Helen looks through (i.e., beyond) the mirror when she shows Bernadette the twinned apartment layout.

Later, she literally climbs through the mirror, out of the safety of her middle class bubble.

Helen, like Candyman, climbs in and out of mirrors and through walls. This is also a kind of foreshadowing of her eventually inheriting his role.

There's a Harry Potter-style connection between Helen and Candyman. She can see through his eyes (at least, when it suits the story).

It's implied that Helen is a reincarnation of the 19th-Century woman Candyman loved (and the reason he was murdered).

Helen and Candyman both suffer injustices while alive, then wreak their revenge after death. Candyman is murdered for daring to touch a white woman. Helen's husband is a manipulative love cheat.

The thing about gazing through mirrors - through a glass darkly, if you like - is that it's often a transformative act in literature and film. Alice went to Wonderland. In Black Swan, it takes Nina on a tragic journey of discovery and delusion.

In Candyman, mirrors disrupt boundaries and middle class safety, pitching Helen into a nightmare.

Is Helen a murderer?

Candyman is part horror movie and part gothic romance, with a love that endures beyond the grave.

Candyman returns for Helen. Or so he says. After all, he tends to come on demand for anyone who says his name enough times (chiming with our superstitions about 'speaking of the devil').

He abducts Anne-Marie's baby, beheads her dog and kills Bernadette to manipulate Helen into doing what he wants. Later, he guts her psychiatrist (giving her a means of escape).

Yet like any good urban legend, there are holes and doubt. We only see Candyman kill Dr Burke. The other times, Helen conveniently blacks out at the crucial moment, making her the classic unreliable narrator.

It's possible Helen kills the others, or helps Candyman. Why? Because she's his long lost love (she just doesn't know it yet). By the end of the film, there's no more pretence: she's revealed to be a cold blooded, hook-wielding killer, just like Candyman.

Keep in mind no one else can see Candyman. The CCTV recording at the mental institute suggests he may be her hallucination, or a part of her personality (which, in a way, he is).

And either way, Helen is at least partly responsible for Dr Burke's death. She summons Candyman knowing exactly what he'll do. Meanwhile Candyman, who supposedly magics Helen to other locations at other points in the film, here only gives her a cover to escape. That ties in with him being her hallucination.

Sweets to the sweet?

The urban legend in Candyman is a kind of curse ( see also Macbeth). Helen hears the rumours and is bitten by curiosity. Or rather, is infected by it.

Female curiosity often ends badly in literature: there's a price to pay for too many questions (or being overly educated). For Helen, this sees her increasingly pulled into Candyman's world. In other words, once through the mirror, she can't come back.

Bit by bit, the world comes to view Helen as an extension of Candyman himself. Finally, she becomes him, in a kind of reverse superhero metamorphosis, from nobody into villain.

But Helen's journey was perhaps always death-bound. It's there in her ties with Ruthie Mae McCoy and Cabrini-Green, and with Candyman himself.

In Hamlet, the Queen announces the death of Hamlet's true love, saying:

"Sweets to the sweet, farewell!"

The sweets she means are funeral flowers. The phrase in the film spells out Helen's fate, right from the moment she spots the writing on the wall (the graffiti). Any doubt in this is vanquished with the chocolates stuffed with razor blades (another urban legend, one that flourishes at Halloween).

Candyman may have come back for Helen, but there's nothing sweet about his ownership of her. You can see this in the quick edits that contrast Helen's face in light and dark when she first meets him in the car park.

Whether this hints at the darkness of death or of ultimately being consumed by revenge, Helen's fate is sealed.

Candyman (1992), directed by Bernard Rose

Other films similar to Candyman

Halloween (horror, the bogeyman, urban legends)

Poltergeist, Nightmare on Elm Street (1980s, horror)

Black Swan (women, mirrors, unreliable narrators)

Scream, Fallen (1990s, horror)

Get Out (race and horror, specifically racism and anti-Blackness)

The Blair Witch Project (horror, urban legends)

The Grey (unreliable narrators, mirroring)

Picture credit: Kalea Jerielle

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White fright? Candyman (1992) explained - The Haughty Culturist

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Chicago grad student Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) is researching urban legends when she stumbles across rumours of a hook-handed serial killer they call 'Candyman'. According to local legend, saying the name into a mirror five times causes him to appear from beyond the grave.

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Arab Educational Institute - Member of Pax Christi International

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We invite you to sponsor a large poster with a human Palestinian story to be attached on the Wall in Bethlehem. Already 270 posters bring out the stories of Palestinian life and challenge the restrictions under occupation. This "Wall Museum" will be expanded and will present many new Palestinian voices to the world.

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Wallposters - Arab Educational Institute

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We invite you to sponsor a large poster with a human Palestinian story to be attached on the Wall in Bethlehem. Already 270 posters bring out the stories of Palestinian life and challenge the restrictions under occupation. This "Wall Museum" will be expanded and will present many new Palestinian voices to the world.

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Billie singing Strange Fruit!

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Billie Holiday - "Strange Fruit" Live 1959 [Reelin' In The Years Archives]

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Article in the New Yorker on the original poem - Bitter Fruit

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Between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and 1950, nearly 4,000 African Americans were killed in lynchings that were largely tolerated or ignored by law enforcement and justice officials. ¹ While the yearly number of victims began to decline around the turn of the century, the years 1933 to 1936 saw an increase in these racially-motivated murders. ²

In 1936, Abel Meeropol, a Jewish American public high school teacher in the Bronx, NY, saw a photograph of the lynching of two African American teenagers, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. ³ The photograph so haunted Meeropol that he wrote a poem about it entitled "Bitter Fruit," published in 1937 in The New York Teacher, the journal of the teachers union. The poem was also later published in the Marxist journal The New Masses.

The child of immigrants who had fled pogroms in Czarist Russia, Meeropol claimed that experiences of centuries of antisemitic violence and hatred inspired his activism. Meeropol and his wife, Anne, were secretly members of the American Communist Party, one of the few political parties in interwar America concerned with economic justice, civil rights, and the intensifying fight against fascism in Spain and elsewhere in Europe.

Meeropol, an amateur songwriter, set the poem to music. He and his wife, along with African American singer Laura Duncan, performed it several times at protest rallies, including one at Madison Square Garden. The song did not become famous, however, until it was sung at New York's Café Society and then recorded in 1939 by jazz singer Billie Holiday.

Café Society was the first integrated cabaret in New York, popular with the elites in the arts and left-wing politics. The founder of the nightclub, Barney Josephson, heard Meeropol perform the song and asked him to play it for Holiday, then his headline performer.

Holiday was hesitant to sing it. She feared the displeasure of the audience who had come to be entertained, not politicized. She also worried about becoming a target of racialized aggression herself. But the audience response at Café Society was thunderous and Holiday soon embraced the song as her own, making it the closing number of all her live performances. ⁴

Holiday's recording label, Columbia, feared a negative reaction from Southern radio stations and their listeners, but gave her a one-time release to record the song with another company. Holiday turned to Commodore Records, an independent alternative jazz label. Although slow to rise in the charts because of the reluctance of radio stations to play it and its low sheet music sales, the 1939 recording eventually sold a million copies and became Holiday's best-selling recording.

In October 1939, a music critic for New York Post wrote of "Strange Fruit": "If the anger of the exploited ever mounts high enough in the South, it now has its Marseillaise." ⁵ The song's reception among African Americans was mixed. Some felt it essentialized blacks as victims, while others praised it for its truthful exposition of the horrors of lynching. All agreed, however, that Billie Holiday's performances placed a taboo topic before mainly white, progressive audiences.

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Between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and 1950, nearly 4,000 African Americans were killed in lynchings that were largely tolerated or ignored by law enforcement and justice officials. 1 While the yearly number of victims began to decline around the turn of the century, the years 1933 to 1936 saw an increase in these racially-motivated murders.