Here's a resource for teachers; a celebration of his 100th anniversary; a review essay; a forthcoming study of The Afro-Modernist Epic by our friend at the University of Memphis, Kathy Lou Schultz.
The Brooks description follows:
In the unique language of visual art, Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey is a startling retelling of Homer’s ancient story of Odysseus, who faced many temptations and battled adversaries to make his way home to Ithaca. While this mighty sea-tale of a brilliant but dislocated hero’s journey home originates with Homer—Bearden makes it undeniably his own. Throughout his career, the search for home was the artist’s most pervasive theme. For decades, he created country- and city-scapes of family love—typically secure but sometimes uneasy images of life at home and travelers making their way back.
To stress the universality of Homer’s epic, and to make it more relevant to the lives of blacks as well as to his own experience as a modern black artist, Bearden makes all of his Homeric figures black: gods, mortals, heroes, and villains. This choice asserts the central meaning of the story: a father and husband trying to get home, a son missing his father, a hero tempted to give up his quest, a wife’s tested patience. These themes, Bearden assures us, apply to black people as well as to anyone else.
The forty-five collages, watercolors, and ink drawings included in the exhibition from the artist’s estate elucidate the development of this series.