Visual Literacy - Responses

We looked at Romare Bearden's works through a website and virtual tour.
Bearden’s Legacy on the Block
Immaculate conception on the fourth floor
A more conventional embrace five buildings down
An innocent kiss passed between lovers
One in an orange dress- on the corner
A nap caught on a stoop
Soon to be interrupted by the broom
Not to wash or feed
But tell him to move on brother, move on
Angels herald a black Mary to heaven
Below the flowers cry
Bright colors across the hearse’s side
A life of people lived in private, exposed to the world
Seeing beyond the bricks and mortar
Into the life inside those walls
Glass reflecting moon and sky as a bather bathes
Watchful eyes from above
see the children play
Dogs observe, garbage-can-gods
Along the block the people stop to talk
A court held in a barbershop courtyard
Lives in full view of the artist watching
Jagged paper scraps capture their days
Bright magenta bookends contain the noise
Of a city street
The messy reality of living life as a different class
A separate class, a separate world
Only now appreciated
In six panels of torn glory
Hanging at the Met.


And, this uses my own prior knowledge.

Following The Torn Road
His cleaning lady said to him one day-
“Draw me, I know I’m not beautiful
But when you can draw me and make me beautiful
Then you can draw”
And he did. He drew that noble woman
With paper scraps and paint
With magazine ads and images clipped from pages.
He drew that washer woman
Bent in the Southern Sun
Made beautiful with his craft.
Then he made her more beautiful still
Fighting for arts shows
To display his dark delicious goddess
To show her beauty to the world.
His fight he fought with the artistic they
They who controlled the arts
They who said who hangs and who is hung
That pale and hateful they.
His spiral group showed the world
What a new they could do
With paint and paper and scraps of hope
Collaged them into view.
Now in his footsteps may walk
Any boy or girl
Of any creed or color or race
From any place in this world
Thanks to him and his beautiful maid
Thanks to his grit and truth
Thanks to his works and life
And legacy, all can now create.
He took that woman and made her golden
Showed her inner pride
And from this inside glancing look
See the world for its truest beauty.