By Romare Bearden
American, 1971.
First Impressions:
To me this looks like a crazy street (block). There are so many different things all happening at once. To me it seems like a collage. Many of the windows are almost "transparent" in the sense that they have the "other" side through the building. If you go to http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/the_block/look_02.html you are able to zoom into The Block in greater detail, and see "normal" and abnormal activities and scenes throught the windows. Some are common activities happening to things that normally would not be part of these activities. For example, there is a "woman" taking a shower, but the "woman" that is being showered is a statue, and the person "scrubbing" her has wings. This might have been the choice of the artist, or maybe he used these figures for his "collage" because they fit what he was trying to illustrate and depict closely. In addition, if one zooms in very closely to the part of the brick building, one can notice that the bricks are extremely accurate, and they make you want to touch them to see if they are real! Additionally, there are some very "personal" and "private" things that are happening in this masterpiece, with the shades wide open. Once zoomed in, the detail and the effort that Beardon put into this painting is fully portrayed. One can zoom in forever, and they will still be able to depict the smallest objects. Every little detail is shown. I believe that Beardon is trying to make a point that every painting can have great detail, and that everyone on the block is family in a way, and different. Everyone is together, and connected because they are all caring, and connected by the sense that they all live on the same block. He also depicts many of the activities that are happening during the day within ever place and space that are not visible to the person on the street.
What I Have Learned:
The Block is made of six separate panels, that when put side by side, they measure eighteen feet in length. Part of it is drawing and part is collage. Some of the materials are: colored paper, metallic papers, photostats, fabric, and "images cut and photocopied from newspapers and magazines." They were all cut out and then were pasted onto Masonite panels. When he was creating this masterpiece, Bearden was fond of putting these panels on tables in his studio, and he would frequently work on more than one collage at a time.
The Block is "composed in a geometrical rhythm of rectangles within rectangles." For example: the window and door openings. None of the buildings are alike, but "they are all unified through the repetition of certain motifs and patterns." These consist of the rows of windows, the circles of the sun, the patter of the brick walls (which appear in almost every pannel), the tops of the barbershop poles, and the objects over the doorways. What is very interesting that Bearden used a scale as well. He exaggerated the size of particular details. This includes a "lightbulb in an apartment room and children's faces in windows." It is very fascinating to note all of the shapes that are repeated in this fine art.
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