NGA: The Art of Romare Bearden - The Visitor, 1970/1974

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[image] The Visitor, 1970/1974

Romare Bearden, The Visitor, 1970/1974
watercolor and gouache with ink and graphite on paper
Herbert Gentry and Mary Anne Rose
© Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y.

Bearden's 1964 collage and Projection entitled Prevalence of Ritual: Tidings both echo and precede other compositions. They recall Bearden's powerful 1941 gouache, The Visitation. In the 1970s the composition was reconfigured into The Visitor -- this delicate watercolor and gouache. This "call and recall" aspect of Bearden's art is among the many ways in which it parallels the vocabulary of blues and jazz music.