I need to start buying CD's again. And I need to use some of my research money to get me some Bearden retrospectives. Branford Marsalis on Bearden:
Albert Murray said Bearden's work was the visual equivalent of the blues. Do you agree?
I don't think so. Bearden's paintings are the visual equivalent of a combination of things, and once you start talking about Bearden's work being the equivalent of the blues you start pigeonholing him as a black painter, and I don't accept that. When I first saw the show at the National Gallery, a woman came up to me and said, "Don't you think it's time the National Gallery gave some space to black artists? Isn't this overdue?" And I said no, because this show isn't about Bearden's blackness, which I find ironic in the first place because he was damned near white in his appearance, although he wasn't in his persona. Bearden belongs here because of his work as an artist. This is not the National Gallery's version of affirmative action. He was a student of painting, period. He wasn't just a Negro historian, he was a student of the world. And so the blues was captured in his work, but so was the experience of European art. He was a polyglot and absorbed everything around him and didn't limit himself, and that makes him exceptional in a world that too often prizes limitation.
I needed this.