Morning Guitar

Morning Guitar is a superb example of Romare Bearden's mature work that demonstrates the artist's mastery of the collage medium. In the present work, Bearden weaves together a variety of individual elements and overriding influences to create a compelling image that combines the motifs of music and domesticity, two enduring themes in the artist's oeuvre. An Artforum reviewer commented on an 1981 exhibition of the artist's work, "What better medium than collage to express the accumulation of memories? And isn't collage the emblematic [sic] medium of the century? Collagists...take bits of chaos to...investigate, organize and present evidence of the activity of a culture...Bearden's work acknowledges the vitality of the American crafts tradition of quiltmaking, rug-looping, and decoration that was a lively art before the appropriation of its ideas by the Cubists...His collages knowingly embrace every influential art movement of the century. The accomplished cut paper forms evoke Matisse, the unsubtle juxtaposition of screwball images hilariously recalls Richard Hamilton, his autobiographical underpinning echoes the structure of so much contemporary art." (as quoted in R. Fine, et al., The Art of Romare Bearden, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 2003, pp. 107-8)