An American Odyssey; the Life and Work of Romare Bearden. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2018.

• Date: 01 August 2019
• Author: Roper, John Herbert

Campbell, Mary Schmidt, An American Odyssey; the Life and Work of Romare Bearden. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2018. xiii+ 443 pages. Hardcover, $34.95.

Romare Bearden--Fred Howard Romare Bearden (1911-1988)--deserves this very fine biography. The many and spectacular color images alone are worth the cost of the book.

Had Bearden done nothing but the huge Projections (1964) collage of black urban life, he would deserve a full biography. It is a loving but no-nonsense tribute to the people of Harlem and the nation. However, as biographer Mary Schmidt Campbell amply demonstrates, he did much more and filled a busy life on a very public stage on which he played multiple roles, including behind the scenes of that stage. Though not always overtly in politics, in the garden variety sense of Aristotle's term, Bearden was...