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Romare Bearden Famous American Modern Artist Inspired by Music, Sounds in Nature

Artists are inspired by many different things. I want to talk a little bit about Romare Bearden, an unusual American artist. Bearden was an African American born in the first part of the 20th century.   He came from the Bronx and graduated from New York University with a degree in education. What makes Bearden so distinct is his interests in so many different things.

He was a professional baseball player in the Negro leagues, but in between his sports sessions he always found time to take courses in art and became a lead cartoonist for the Eucleian Society. He was also a writer, a costume designer for the theatre, a composer.

He became well known as an artist for a piece he did in 1970 where he combined polymer paint on composition board, with cloth and paper. The piece called Patchwork Quit stands today in the museum of Modern Art.

He studied art in Germany and took much of his influence from Mexican Muralists Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco. When the war broke out, he joined and afterward went to France to study philosophy. He also took up composing and helped write “Sea Breeze.” This artist took his inspiration from many different interest and many different things, but primarily form music, and sounds. His art was universal, because he was well read, well educated and his friends were artists, poets, musicians, and writers.

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Edward Hicks was a famous American Folk art painter that took his inspiration from stories, mostly biblical stories, but many of local stories, farms and landscapes of New York and Pennsylvannia. Hicks was a Quaker and believed in the prophecy of Isaiah, and many of his paintings reflect that.  His paintings reflect justice and gentleness of men and beasts, just as prophesied.

What is strange, that as well known as his paintings became, art was only secondary to Hicks. He considered himself more of a preacher than an artist and only started painting late in life.  He started painting when he was mid aged and at one point almost thought that it was contrary to his religion, but at the same time he felt that it brought meaning to his life.  When he passed away, those that mourned him mourned him as a preacher, and not as a pastor. It wasn’t until much later that his art became sought after by great collectors. This is a man that took his inspiration from the life around him, from his natural surroundings and from his strong religious beliefs.

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I recently came across a gallery with an exhibition I thought quite interesting. It was a collection of different artists work, but what made the collection interesting was that it was a collection of fine art photographs of cemetery and memorial art from different parts of the world.

Some of the cemeteries were in Paris, others in the United States, in Milan, Genova and even from Moscow. The photographs were truly emotional and believe it or not, I did feel inspired. You would think that it would be morbid, but it is more nostalgic, beautiful, sensitive, solitary and awe inspiring.

What makes an artist look to portray this type of art? It may be his need to portray the solitary existence of man, and the knowledge that in the end we all face the same fate. It is a form of poetry, and of salvation, and maybe even transcendence. Whatever it is, it is beauty. Although this type of exhibit may seem morbid, it is more of a sentimental journey and should be witnessed by all.

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Today many artists get their inspiration from life, from emotions and the emotional turmoil we go through on this road we all take.  As an example Artist Sandra Schimmel never could relate to her artwork as much as she can today. She creates portraits of famous people and sometimes not so famous people using a method called acrylic mosaic fusion, which was created by the artist herself when she was looking for a way to be environmentally kind and recycle. Then one day a freakish accident occurred which made her identify even more with her unique art style.

Her dog a Labrador attacked her, and bit her nose off. After several plastic surgery operations, her nose returned to normal, but she did not feel like it was the same. Similarly the faces she paints are put together.  She began to question who she was? Was she the person that people outwardly saw, or was she the inner being she knows herself to be? The point is her artwork has also begun to reflect these questions she asks of herself.

In her artwork she incorporates all kinds of materials from postcards, greeting cards to photographs and advertising in her portraits.

Henry Rousseau did not start out life with the intention of being a painter. In fact, his only ambition was to get his family out of debt and on the path of prosperity. He was born in the 1800’s to a plumber. In his early life he worked as a lawyers assistant and then found a job with the government where he remained for many years. It wasn’t until he was in his forties that he took up painting and at 49 he retired from his job to take up painting full time.

He had no formal art schooling but did get some consultation from Felix Auguste Clement and Jean Leon Gerome. Most of his paintings are inspired by fantasy and dreams. His research is done from taxidermified wild animals, illustrated books, and botanical gardens. He once told a famous art critic that he seemed to dream when he went to the botanical gardens and felt like he was in far off lands.

At the time many of his contemporaries thought he painted child like paintings and that he was highly unprofessional. Today he is thought to be one of the influences on Fauvism.

Keith Harring was a contemporary painter born in 1958, in Pennsylvania. At an early age he was found drawing and developed the skills from his father. He started with simple cartoons drawn from Disney characters and popular books he loved. As his talent developed he found himself being drawn and inspired by public places. He lived in NewYork and became fascinated with downtown streets, subways, clubs, dance halls. His friends were graffiti artists, writers, musicians, and performers. The energy of such a life is what inspires his current work. He took social issues to heart and it is seen throughout his work. He was also inspired by the works of other artists like Pierre Alechinsky, Jean Dubuffet, Brion Gysin and Robert Henri. With all of these influencing factors Harring became determined to make his work public. In the 80’s he was inspired to draw on large advertising panels in the subway.  Because there was such a public audience here he began to draw several white chalk drawings on black matte paper and ended up doing hundreds of these drawings in the subway system. During this time he achieved international recognition. He has done several public paintings regarding social issues, including a billboard in Times Square.

This artist found his inspiration in living and in all thing that surround his New York life and his work reflects this and he was very apt at expressing his feelings in this regard. Keith Harring acomplished much in his short life. He died from AIDS at the age of 32.

Born in 1944, author Rita Mae Brown writes the Mrs. Murphy books and The “Sister” Jane Foxhunting mysteries. She is also known for rescuing myriads of animals and placing them in new homes. If she can not find other homes for them, she keeps them herself on her large Virginia homestead. Her Mrs. Murphy books are based on the sleuthing abilities of two cats and one dog.

Speaking from a writer’s viewpoint, she said,

“A deadline is negative inspiration. Still it’s better than no inspiration at all.”

College students everywhere can attest to getting the term paper or the project started and completed as a result of the deadline the professor set at the beginning of the semester.

However, even though the deadlines are negative inspirations, they can provide us with some fabulous projects and very creative papers. The artist who will be showing his or her work on a certain date may decide to expand on a certain landscape, turning one idea into several terrific ideas - all because of a deadline. The soloist who sings in church on a given Sunday has a deadline. The teacher who begins his or her career has a deadline for preparation before the work begins.

Deadlines are everywhere - in the workplace, in the social setting, in the school setting.

However negative the inspiration, let them inspire!

Ptoto: Courtesy of BradChristensen

Do you like a lot of things? You may even be worried because you tend to like a lot of different art styles and cant focus on just one style, but this is normal. There are even many artists that like many different objects and styles and have started combining them in interesting ways.

A great example are the illustrations by Andrea Joseph. In her work, she displays her love of small things, like tickets, buttons, certain things made of a certain color. She combines this love into her illustrations. Although these illustrations may seem to be without any definite composition, the composition of these pieces is very well thought out, and you can tell by the way your eye travels through the illustration. If you look at her pieces for a moment, you will notice that certain tickets or parts of paper stand out above others, this is what makes the composition of her illustrations work. The colors she chooses are also unique, because they tend to be all in the same hue, just in different shades, which only an extremely talented artist can do.

BMW recently commissioned Joshua Davis to portray his impression of the Z4 Coupe.  It turns out that Joshua Davis, a renowned commercial and fine artist, is working in algorithmic graphic design, which is a program that uses mathematical algorithms to reconstruct an image. The above image is what he came up with for his impression of the Z4 Coupe.  Many have commented that they just cannot see the relationship between this piece of work and the car.

But if you look closely you can see how the mathematical precision does give you the impression of what a car is like. It really depends on each person and whether he can see the resemblance, but the truth is that the new use of such algorithms are interesting, and the way an image can be reconstructed and turned into a piece of expensive art work is also interesting.

Art is in the eyes of the maker and the eyes of the beholder. It really depends on the artist, what he wants to portray and what you see as the viewer. One thing is for sure, anyone who is into computer graphics will understand the difficulty in creating an image with 120, 000 layers and 50,000 vectors.

Another famous artist who was inspired by his own imagination and inner thoughts was Rene Magritte. He was born into a middle class family, his father, a tailor, and his mother a milliner.

Rene Magritte was a Belgian artist, born at the end of the 19th century. He began to draw in 1910 when he began to take private art classes. When he was 12 his mother committed suicide, and many of his first paintings, a series of paintings of people with cloths obscuring their faces, may have been influenced from his witnessing the retrieval of his dead mothers body from the river.

In 1927 he had his first surreal exhibit and was criticized terribly for it. His failure caused him to move to Paris where he continued to show his paintings.

As it occurs in many other cases, most of the interest in his work did not occur until some time after his death. His work is mostly fantasy based, but has a somber mood and style to it. It is said that his work may have influenced the Pop, conceptual, and minimalist art movements. His work showed with younger contemporaries who later took on the fauvist and pop style.