ObjectAnnotation_Community

Sources

He is Risen, Passion of Christ Series, 1945

Lenox Avenue between 132nd and 133rd Streets in 2024

Romare Bearden, The Block, 1971

The Block by Romare Bearden depicts Lenox Avenue between 132nd and 133rd Streets in Bearden’s native neighbourhood of Harlem in New York City (Tretyakov Gallery). Bearden’s parents participated in the Great Migration, during which impoverished Southern African Americans moved to the North in search of economic and social opportunities, moving the young Bearden from South Carolina to New York (The Met). Romare set up his first studio on 125th Street alongside fellow Harlem Renaissance artist Jacob Lawrence and later became a member of the Harlem Artists Guild. Bearden was also a founding member of “Spiral”, a collective for African American artists created “for the purpose of discussing the commitment of the N**** artist in the present struggle for civil liberties, and as a discussion group to consider common aesthetic problems”. In addition to being an artist, Romare worked as a social worker for over thirty years, and his works contain a vested interest in social issues (Tretyakov Gallery). Bearden painted the street from the front room of a friend’s apartment, studying, photographing, and sketching the street over the course of months. The Block, like many of Bearden’s works, is composed of a variety of materials, including cut and pasted printed, coloured, and metallic papers, photostats, graphite, marker, gauche, and watercolour. He drew inspiration from the art of his mentor, the Expressionist and Dadaist artist George Grosz, medieval European art, and African tribal sculpture (The Met). While he was not Catholic, Bearden was fascinated by the Passion of Christ, producing a series on the subject in the 1940s. His intense focus on the body and suffering of Christ was inspired by the Catholic art he saw in Europe during the Second World War and his personal belief that Christ’s Passion, death and resurrection conveyed “universal human values” (Witovsky). Therefore, Bearden sought to emphasise the spiritual quality of Christ’s sacrifice rather than the biblical narrative. Bearden’s interest in “Christian symbology” mirrors that of Kiki Smith and Joel-Peter Witkin (Heartney, 37). Moreover, his explicit focus on Christ’s body and his desire to convey the emotions associated with the Crucifixion recall Andrea Serano’s 1987 work Piss Christ (Heartney, 33).

The Sacred, Profane, and Obscene

One of Bearden's close friends and fellow figure of the Harlem Renaissance, Ralph Ellison, described his work as "a place composed of visual puns and artistic allusions... where the sacred and the profane, reality and dream, are ambiguously mingled" (Tretyakov Gallery). In Postmodern Heretics, Eleanor Heartney makes a statement similar to Ellison's. However, with specific reference to Catholic artists, "Catholicism subtly pervade[s] their work, frequently emerging in a mixture of sacred and profane" (Heartney, 33). Ellison's use of the descriptors "sacred" and "profane" is intriguing, as the etymology of "profane" from the Latin profanus means "before or outside the temple" and refers to secular concerns outside of the Catholic Church. As depicted in The Block, secularism is part of living in a society and coexists alongside the sacred. In contrast to blasphemy, which refers to disrespect to the sacred, an offence to God, or sacrilege, the violation or misuse of the sacred, profane, should be understood in a less pejorative send. However, the profane has often been associated with the charge of obscenity. Allegations of obscenity came into the public and legal spheres with the advent of the Hicklin test during R. v Hicklin in 1868. The court concluded that something was deemed obscene if it could "deprave and corrupt those whose minds were open to such immoral influences", regardless of any other merit a work might have. The phrase "those whose minds are open to such immoral influences" implicitly refers to Judeo-Christian understandings of morality and implies that those lacking these beliefs are morally weak. In 1993, the case United States v. One Book Called Ulysses addressed a similar issue, whether James Joyce's novel was obscene. However, in contrast to the Hicklin case, the court ruled that Joyce's novel was not obscene and contained merit as a whole. Furthermore, in 1973, the Supreme Court ruled on Miller v. California, a case instigated by Miller, the owner of an adult store, advertising his wares via brochures depicting explicit scenes. However, the Supreme Court ruled that something could only be considered obscene if it lacked "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value". Despite this ruling, many artists' works, including Andrea Serano's Piss Christ (1987), have come under attack for being profane or obscene. Many Americans decried Serano's work, complexly ignoring that the work was a very real expression of his devotion (Heartney, 34). One of Piss Christ's most outspoken critics was Senator Alfonse D'amato, who lambasted the work as obscene, "deplorable, [and] a despicable display of vulgarity". Even though the work does not meet the criteria of obscenity as defined by law: "whether 'the average person applying contemporary community standards would find that work 'taken as a whole' appeals to 'prurient interest whether the work depicts or describes in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct". The condition of approval by the "contemporary community" places responsibility in the hands of the viewer but has no hard and fast definition. Moreover, The Block contains sexually explicit imagery, which positions the viewer in the place of the voyeur. In the fourth panel, a "look-in", as Bearden described his cutaways revealing the inside of buildings, depicts a couple having sex (Tretyakov Gallery). Yet their place within the lively, colourful composition is secondary and is not immediately evident .

Community in The Block

Community plays a crucial role in the reception of art and in The Block as the subject of the painting. At no point in Catholic theology or the Bible is community defined; it encompasses everyone regardless of gender, faith, race, or socio-economic status. The Bible even urges us to “love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12-17) and declares that “we are one body, individually members of one another” (Romans 12:3-8), insisting that as Catholics, we should view everyone as members of our community. Furthermore, in 1 John 4:19-21, Christ states that “those who love God must love their brothers and sisters”, explicitly characterising humanity as a global brotherhood. In 1962, Pope John Paul II characterised the “small-scale Church” (the Catholic Church) as the model for the “large-scale Church” (humanity) and stated that “the Christan family is called upon…to be a sign of unity for the world”. Moreover, as demonstrated in The Block, Pope Francis observed that “local individuals and groups can make a real difference; they are able to instil a greater sense of responsibility and a strong sense of community”. Community is a key component of The Block, as its subjects grieve together, lean out windows to converse with friends in the street, and gather outside barber shops. However, Bearden also includes the marginalised in his community, as represented by a homeless man in the fourth panel. Care for the poor and marginalised is crucial to our duty to the community and is one of our rights and responsibilities. As mentioned in “The Case for Community”, there is a duty that comes with the support of the community, and American individualism must be tempered by the Catholic virtues (Dionne). Oftentimes, the Catholic emphasis on community is viewed as antithetical to liberty and personal freedoms, which Dionne explains is a misconception to believe that individuality is the sole defining value of what makes us American (Dionne). The community has been wrongly associated with Communism by the American right, and thus, anti-liberty (Dionne). He also notes that there are conflicting values inherent in the Constitution and that inspired interpretation is required to determine what is best for the common good of the community (Dionne). Moreover, he encourages people to turn to the community via their faith and with the ultimate goal of improving society (Dionne).

The Church as a source of Community

In its totality, the painting is 4 feet long and composed of six panels, each depicting scenes from daily life in Harlem. Three of the panels, the second, third, and fourth, depict explicitly Christian images, including a church, one of the main centres for the community for the inhabitants of Harlem. The church in the second panel is a grey, three-story building featuring a monumental installation of Christ as a Black man being lifted up into heaven by two sets of angels. One pair of angels lifts his feet, and the other supports him on either side. At the top of the building is a seated larger angel who holds a book. All of the angels and the figure of Christ are very reminiscent of medieval European iconography. On the sidewalk in front of the church, a group of mourners transport a coffin covered by a black shroud towards a waiting hearse. Towards the viewer’s right, a group of mourners look on. In the third panel, one of Bearden’s “look-ins” reveals an angel appearing to a woman in a scene reminiscent of the Annunciation. The scene is revealed to the viewer by the cutaway but occurs unnoticed by everyone else, leaving it up to the viewer to determine if this should be read as a real or imagined experience. A church with a prominent awning reading “Sunrise Baptist” is on the fourth panel. A painting of Christ pointing to a Bible, a bleeding heart, and a candle are displayed above the awning. Outside the church, a mother with two young children faces the viewer, and a homeless man sleeps on the sidewalk.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/481891https://www.tretyakovgallerymagazine.com/articles/1-2012-34/romare-beardens-block-american-story http://timothyquigley.net/vcs/bearden-abex.pdf

Romare Bearden, The Black American in Search of His Identity, 1969

Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knige Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919-20

Collage, Colour, and Contrast

This first panel exemplifies Bearden’s mixed media approach, inspired by Dadaist artists. The buildings appear to be gauche, cut paper, and magazine clippings. The figures and cars were also taken from magazines and photographs. Moreover, Bearden contrasts the abstract flatness of the buildings against the hyper-realistic clippings to great visual effect. Throughout the piece, Bearden plays with scale, from the minute figures in the street to the looming shadow of the man’s head in the doorway. Moreover, the expected neon liquor store sign on a street corner or strolling pedestrians is juxtaposed with the surreal oversized mousetrap revealed by a cutaway to the interior of the building. The colours of this block appear much brighter than that of the block to the far right, imbuing the street with a greater sense of life and energy, and while their bold, flat forms can be misconstrued as unsophisticated, they have been cut, assembled, and composed with absolute precision. While copyright prevents these images from being enlarged, making it difficult to discern the pedestrian's features with specificity, they appear to be white and look in at the neighbourhood at a distance or ignore it completely, suggesting that they do not view Harlem’s residents as members of their community.