Artistic and Literary Sources |
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Borrowing and MixingNow compare Bearden's collage The Prevalence of Ritual: Baptism to the visual sources reproduced here.
Romare Bearden, The Prevalence of Ritual:
Baptism, 1964, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966
Here, a baptism, the Christian rite of purification and initiation, is being performed. It is a river baptism such as Bearden witnessed in the South. At center—his body constructed of brown-toned paper, his face partially covered by an African mask—is the one being baptized. On his left stands the preacher, one arm raised to anoint him. His rectangular profile is pasted over another face, and his dress combines fragments of a preacher's white collar and cuffs and a businessman's pinstriped suit. Helping support the initiate on the other side is a profile figure with exaggerated, carved features—especially his nose and mouth. Below, immersed to the chest in water, are two figures whose faces have the incised or slit eyes reminiscent of some African sculpture. Parts of these faces are actually formed by picture fragments of masks. Their hands are enlarged and expressive. A female figure, right, wears a white headscarf. Figures, left, wear draped robes. At bottom are collaged rectangles that suggest the river, and behind, at left, are classic details of the rural South Bearden knew—cotton field, train on the move, and country church. right, from top:
Bearden's photostat of African masks Kwele face mask, Gabon or Congo, 19th-20th century, Metopolitan Museum of Art, Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979, photo ©1993 Metropolitan Museum of Art Portrait of an Oni (King) (detail), Ife culture, Nigeria, late 15th/early 17th century, Museum of Ife Antiquities, Nigeria, photo Werner Forman Archive/Art Resource, NY Otobo mask of a water spirit, Kalabrari Ijo, Nigeria, Collection Raymond Wielgus Nimba shoulder mask (detail), Baga tribe, Guinea, Rietberg Museum, Zurich, photo: Wettstein & Kauf |
Bearden admired the formal
beauty and stylized forms of African masks and statuary.  His
felt strongly connected to African art, especially during the 1960s
when civil rights and black pride movements engaged American society.
In addition to studying African art in books and journals, he could
see it in local collections and museum exhibitions. The black-and-white
photostatic image here, a group of African masks, was in Bearden's
studio—he may have cut reproductions out of books or magazines
and laid them out for this composite photograph.Though not necessarily the precise works Bearden saw, these comparative illustrations typify the African art to which Bearden had access. You can easily identify these African sculptural elements in Bearden's collage. |
"In my
work...I seek connections. People in a baptism in a Virginia stream
are linked to John the Baptist, to ancient purification rites, and
to their African heritage."
Now compare Baptism's central figure with the cubist painting by Pablo
Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Picasso's work was a
shocking break from the European art world's norm for representing
the human figure. The African art Picasso saw in Paris was decisive
in the contrived, planar bodies and masklike faces he gave his demoiselles.
Bearden knew Picasso's work, which filtered African art through a
Western sensibility. Bearden's Baptism collage also reflects the profound influence he found in religious paintings by fourteenth-century Italian masters such as Duccio and Giotto. Look at Giotto's fresco from the Florentine church of Santa Croce. Bearden incorporated a shoulder and drapery from this or a similar work. He may also have used the similar outstretched hands for both compositional and spiritual purposes. 
Giotto, The Raising of Drusiana, detail from a fresco illustrating the lives of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evan gelist, mid-1320s, Peruzzi Chapel, Church of Santa Croce, Florence, Italy. Photo: © Scala/Art Resouce, NY
top: Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Lillie P. Bliss Bequest
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 The
central figure wears a Kwele mask from Gabon or Congo. |
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 Linear
markings on the raised hand of the right figure in the stream and
on the heads of the two figures at left recall ritual scarification,
seen in the sculpture of an Ife king figure. |
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 The
eyes and nose of the left foreground figure are from an African mask
of a water spirit—a perfect reference to baptism's use of water
for purification. |
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 Who
could miss the exaggerated features of the center-right figure?
It
might be part of a Nimba mask from Guinea, which exported
many similar examples. |
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