Romare Bearden Mixed Media Project: Art History Lesson

Perfect as at the beginning of a class or semester, or even as a break, this quick lesson has students create a mixed media art using magazines and their own artistic voice. Introduce students to Romare Bearden whose artwork was inspired by memories of past events and favorite places. Bearden is an American painter, whose collages depict aspects of American black culture. He is considered one of the most important African American artists of the 20th century. This lesson is intended to introduce students to Romare Bearden but also to begin to explore their own artistic voice by pulling textures, colors, and images from magazines without planning. Bearden once said he didn’t plan to have recurring symbols in his artwork, they just came out...like the trains and snakes, the students in this lesson will do the same thing. At the end of the lesson, students will have a classroom critique exploring how we communicate through visuals and what they learned about themselves as an artist by com