Art © Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
On view
Moon and Two Suns,
1971
Bearden’s Moon and Two Sons, made from newspaper clippings, textile fragments, and other found materials, displays a striking visual rhythm. In the collage, Bearden drew upon the logic of jazz improvisation to reassemble imagery from the visual and material cultures of Africa and its diasporas as well as the Ñuu Savi people of Mesoamerica. An upright crocodile evokes the animal known as denkyem, associated with royal power in Akan courts. The composite central figure incorporates photographs of iconic artworks, including a cast-brass head of an oba (king) of Benin Kingdom, with his distinct beaded net headdress, and the facial features of a Ñuu Savi turquoise mosaic mask. Bearden uses collage to insist upon the distinctiveness of each culture he references, holding individual Akan, Edo, and Ñuu Savi elements in tension and in tandem.
Comparative image: Mixtec, Late Postclassic, Mexico, Mask, 1400–1521. Turquoise, mother-of-pearl, Cedrela wood, conch shell, cinnabar, and pine resin, 16.8 x 15.2 x 13.5 cm. The British Museum, London. Bequeathed by Henry Christy (1865)
More Context
Handbook Entry
Associated with the Harlem Renaissance as well as the Civil Rights Movement, Romare Bearden worked in a variety of disciplines, among them the visual arts, poetry, music, and set design. He began to experiment with collage in 1963, the same year he founded the Spiral Group, a collective of African American artists eager to expand their role as social activists. Based on the reclamation of found materials, Bearden’s collages represent and affirm the lives of African American peoples. Most display a striking visual rhythm, the result of Bearden’s immersion in jazz and blues, and some exhibit the influence of African art, a source of Black pride in the 1960s. Such is the case with <em>Moon and Two Suns</em>, which features a standing male figure whose accoutrements place him in Africa, as does his visage, which bears a striking resemblance to an African mask. Four quadrupeds flank the figure; one appears to be an alligator, but the identities of the other three are ambiguous. More fantastic than real, they might be understood as manifestations of an indigenous religion.
Information
1971
