Remembering the inimitable American artist Romare Bearden, born 110 years ago today. Titled Summertime, this large-scale 1967 collage was one of several he made during the decade, exemplifying the artist’s enduring “commitment to the African-American experience” (Saint Louis Art Museum). “A woman eats an ice-cream cone in front of a brownstone, a man sits on a chair, and two oversized faces peer from behind window shades,” the museum text continues of the work’s apparent simplicity. But, upon closer look, the “active pattern of materials, its overwhelming size, and the mask-like faces it presents” create a subtle tension, conjuring the “over-crowded and potentially explosive inner cities of the summer of 1967”, with evocative results.
