Analysis Of At Connie's Inn By Romare Bearden

In Romare Bearden’s artwork At Connie’s Inn, the style of the piece is in the form of abstraction because it was a collage piece that would usually involve different types of materials pasted onto an artwork. In this collage, Bearden turned the nightclub scene into postmodern feel of unpredictable repetitions and juxtapositions of shapes and patterns in his art that created an unexpected rhythm. When I look at the collage’s composition, majority of the figures and items were unified as a whole by being clustered into different groups in order to make the scenery busier. The only people that were not smooshed into a group were the bassist, drummer, dancer, and the black figure in front of the piano which are located on the left side of the piece.

I can see in the collage that the different colors in the mixed backdrop behind the musicians and dancer are activating in different diagonal directions by the thick blue, red, and yellow lines directly pointing towards the tuba located in the left corner while the diluted brownish mixtures of red, yellow, and with a few dots of green diagonally making their way towards the tuba. However, when it came to the space in the artwork, there was more positive space than negative space. The examples of positive space were the white audience sitting together in the tables and the musicians and dancer on the stage. The items such as the tubas, the high-relief mural, blue curtain, and the tables in which the crowds were sitting in are also examples of positive space, since they also caused my eyes to focus on the main subject. The only area that showed some negative space was within the mixed analogous background located behind the musicians and dancer. When it came down to viewing the mass of the piece, I can feel the weight shifting towards the foreground because the size of the crowd appears to be much larger than musicians in the background. The tuba in the right corner is also part of the heavier mass since its size helped cause more shifting into the foreground. There was also an asymmetrical balance as well since there were more people and other items appearing at the right side. The left side however, counterbalanced the artwork by having less people and items involved in the work. As for the whole texture of the piece I felt like a rough sensation since the different placements of the materials in the work made it that