'...All of us from the time we begin to think are on an Odyssey.'
These words of Romare Bearden particularly apply to the black enigmatic figure in his cycle of collages based on Homer's epic on exhibition at the Currier Museum of Art. Here in triumph, here in hell, here suspended in air trussed to a mast, here drowning, here with the sweet Nausicaa, the wily Circe, the aggrieved Penelope, he was a man of always in or on the edge of trouble, trouble (or wrath, or mourning) being his very name.
But that black cutout, puppet-like in the midst of Bearden's exquisite collage work--his sinuous shapes, his startling juxtapositions, his subtle layerings, the rhythms of his forms and colors--is also me, is everyone. Trouble is part of life, inevitably. Get used to it.
What did you artists of this weekend say to me? From Sibelius' 2nd Symphony on Friday building through constant iterations to a triumph tremendous but exhausted, to the man on the run in Khemiri's Invasion Saturday, to Bearden's hero yesterday for whom the only trouble worse than going home would be not doing so, what did I hear you saying?
A friend said to me recently 'I need to find a way to engage with life.' In spite of trouble, perhaps because of trouble, these artists found engagement in the expression of particular odysseys, each one ultimately their own. Could that be for you, my friend?
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