Narrator, Glenn Lowry: Though best known for the figurative collages that he made in the early 1960s, The Silent Valley of Sunrise is one of Romare Bearden's early abstract paintings. Curator Anne Temkin.
Curator, Ann Temkin: Bearden, like many other artists of his generation living in New York City, during the course of the 1950s, got swept up in the abstract expressionists vocabulary.
The Silent Valley of Sunrise is one of many in which he worked abstractly. Whereas the title of this painting might lead you to believe that it was made out in the countryside, in fact, it was made on Canal Street, in the studio to which Romare Bearden had just recently moved down from Harlem. Although here you have a reference to the sunrise in terms of the orange and yellow pooling of paint and background, I think you also have a strong feeling of the energy of the city, and even the surface of the street, or the sidewalk, or buildings.
And I think this very much has to do not only with the sights of the city, but the sounds of the city. Music was an important part of the studio atmosphere for the abstract expressionists. For many of the artists, jazz was something they knew quite intimately.
Narrator: In a 1968 interview, Bearden explained why jazz meant so much to him.
Artist, Romare Bearden: It's based on improvisation. The rhythms, the personal involvement, all of this is part of, uh, the jazz experience. And many of the abstract expressionists would often play jazz music while they were painting, or at least were very interested in that art form.