Can You Hear a Painting Swing?

A jubilant visual ode to music, memory, and community.

What does a Romare Bearden collage sound like?

To some, it’s the cool syncopation of Miles Davis, the layered storytelling of a John Coltrane solo, or the staccato snap of Ella Fitzgerald’s phrasing. Bearden didn’t just love jazz—he lived it, translated it, and reimagined it through art. His work hums with rhythm, improvisation, and memory.

Jazz wasn’t just a soundtrack to Bearden’s life. It was his co-conspirator, a force that shaped how he saw the world and how he chose to represent it. In an era when both the visual and musical arts were grappling with what it meant to be modern—and what it meant to be Black—Bearden found common ground between paint and performance, collage and chorus.

As we celebrate Jazz Appreciation Month, there’s no better time to revisit how Romare Bearden bent visual language to match the shape of music to come.

Improvisation in Paper and Paint

Bearden’s collages don’t behave. They riff, they stutter, they explode. They skip over literal representation in favor of something more elliptical, rhythmic, and alive.

This is no accident. Bearden often spoke of his creative process in musical terms. Like a jazz musician responding to a chord change, he layered images intuitively—cutting, rearranging, and layering fragments into visual compositions that were at once grounded and dreamlike.

In jazz, structure, and spontaneity collide. A chord progression might be fixed, but the performance? That’s where the magic happens. Bearden adopted this same mindset. He built his compositions around repeating visual “motifs”—faces, instruments, stoops, trains—and then allowed each piece to unfold organically. No two works were the same, yet all echoed a shared improvisational spirit.

Art historian Robert O’Meally, founding director of Columbia’s Center for Jazz Studies, once described Bearden’s work as aiming not “to paint about jazz but to paint jazz.” You don’t just see Bearden’s work. You feel it pulse.

Carolina Shout and Three Folk Musicians

Bearden’s love of music—particularly jazz and blues—infuses many of his best-known works. But two in particular stand as towering odes to the soundscape of Black America:

Carolina Shout (1974)

This vivid collage-engraving, Carolina Shout, is part of Bearden’s Of the Blues series, a body of work that delves into the emotional and historical resonance of African-American music. Named after the seminal stride piano piece by James P. Johnson, the work pulses with syncopation. Bearden layers fractured bodies, gesturing hands, and looming instruments into a near-musical arrangement that vibrates with energy.

A horn player’s torso arcs into motion, his form broken into rhythmic planes. A banjo rests in the lap of a figure whose face is both ancestral and timeless. What makes Carolina Shout so compelling isn’t just its visual richness—it’s the way it mirrors the structure of a jazz or blues composition: tension, repetition, improvisation, release. Bearden trades traditional perspective for a sense of musical time, allowing the scene to unfold like a shout across memory.

Three Folk Musicians (1967)

Here, Bearden pares down the cacophony, focusing instead on three figures—two banjo players and a guitarist—posed with reverence and warmth. Though the collage format remains bold and modern, the subject matter nods to folk and blues traditions of the rural South, where Bearden spent summers as a child.

The figures are built from photo clippings and textured papers. Their instruments anchor the scene, evoking the roots of American music in storytelling, labor, and survival. This work hums with the quiet dignity of tradition—one passed down, altered, but never lost.

Bearden’s Musical Collaborations

Bearden wasn’t an outsider looking in on music culture—he was part of it. Throughout his life, he cultivated deep friendships with legendary musicians, including Duke Ellington, Alvin Ailey, and Wynton Marsalis. His Harlem studio was a gathering space, not just for visual artists but for composers, dancers, and thinkers.

He also contributed artwork for several album covers and concert posters, further blurring the lines between visual and auditory art forms. His cover for Donald Byrd’s New Perspective (1963) is just one example, capturing the bold, boundary-pushing spirit of hard bop and gospel fusion.

These collaborations weren’t simply decorative—they were extensions of shared cultural work. Bearden and his musical peers saw themselves as part of a long tradition of Black creative innovation, reaching back through blues and spirituals, forward into free jazz and Afro-futurism.

Jazz as Cultural Memory

Bearden takes us backstage to the glamour, grit, and grace of Black performance.

Bearden understood that jazz wasn’t just sound. It was a repository of memory—a form of Black historical consciousness. The improvisational nature of jazz mirrored the adaptability required of Black Americans, who had to continuously remake identity and community in the face of change and displacement.

Much of Bearden’s art functions the same way. His collages are full of migrating trains, front porches, street corners, and jukeboxes—images loaded with the weight of history. In these works, jazz becomes a stand-in for cultural endurance.

He once said, “The artist has to be something like a whale, swimming with his mouth wide open, absorbing everything until he has what he really needs.” Bearden devoured both visual and musical traditions, then recombined them in ways that felt utterly new.

April: A Month for Jazz and Bearden

Each April, we celebrate Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM)—an opportunity to honor the rich heritage and continuing influence of jazz music. But it’s also a perfect time to reflect on how jazz shaped the visual arts, particularly through figures like Romare Bearden.

Institutions like the Smithsonian have recognized Bearden’s central role in jazz history—not just as a fan or interpreter, but as a collaborator in the culture of sound. His pieces are frequently included in jazz retrospectives and interdisciplinary exhibitions, serving as visual jazz scores in their own right.

Feel the Rhythm, See the Story

A regal tribute to the great Bessie Smith — voice of power, pain, and joy.

Romare Bearden’s art didn’t just depict music—it moved with it. It riffed, clashed, harmonized. Like a great solo, it made the familiar strange again, reminding us that every note—every fragment—holds a story.

As we mark Jazz Appreciation Month, let’s celebrate not only the sounds of Coltrane, Holiday, and Parker—but also the sight of Bearden, who helped us see jazz with new eyes.

Explore and Engage:

• View Bearden’s jazz-inspired works online or in galleries—The Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA, and The Smithsonian have featured his pieces in music-themed exhibitions.
• Watch a Cinque Artist Talk exploring music and memory in contemporary Black art.
• Share your favorite Bearden piece or jazz album that pairs with his work—because art, like jazz, is best when it sparks conversation.

Let the rhythm guide you. Bearden already laid down the beat.