Black artists who defied stereotypes

African-American photographer Charles "Teenie" Harris aimed his camera at everyone from world-renowned jazz musicians to hard-hat wearing laborers. Visual artist Romare Bearden depicted similar subjects in his collages, paintings, and prints.

Both focused on conveying stereotype-defying images of black communities as creative, productive places - and by doing so, each made invaluable chronicles of the 20th-century black experience. Each is being posthumously celebrated through major museum projects that offer in-depth views of their work.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington recently opened "The Art of Romare Bearden," the biggest retrospective to date of his colorful, elegant, and often musically influenced pieces. The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh is undertaking a monumental endeavor in its attempt to catalog thousands of Harris images by 2007. With "Documenting Our Past: The Teenie Harris Archive Project," the museum hopes to identify the subjects of 3,600 prints and catalog 55,000 of the more than 80,000 negatives Harris made during his 44-year career as a studio photographer and journalist for the Pittsburgh Courier, once the nation's largest black newspaper.

The Carnegie has hung 300 prints and filled binders with photocopies of all 3,600, many never before seen, and, because Harris was functionally illiterate, rarely documented. The copies can be perused at the museum, at several libraries, or online. (100 images per month will be added to the archive site.) Viewers are invited to record any relevant memories on paper, via e-mail, or with an oral historian.

Harris, who lived in Pittsburgh, and Bearden, of Harlem, shared much in common. Both contributed to black newspapers: One published photos, and the other drew political cartoons. Both depicted images of Pittsburgh, where Bearden lived for a while, and their careers blossomed during a rich period known as the Harlem Renaissance, when that black community and others, including Pittsburgh's Hill District, experienced the growth of an erudite middle class. The Hill, once known as "the crossroads of the world," incubated many jazz talents, including Billy Eckstine, Billy Strayhorn, Lena Horne, and George Benson. Harris and Bearden were both captivated by jazz.

In fact, jazz and blues were among Bearden's main inspirations. Many of his works are named for songs, and he created album covers for Wynton Marsalis, Charlie Parker, and Donald Byrd. The Byrd piece is called "Thank You ... for F.U.M.L. (Funking Up My Life)."

The Bearden retrospective, the museum's first major survey of a black artist's work, is the centerpiece of a citywide tribute to black culture called "Blues & Dreams: Celebrating the African-American Experience in Washington, D.C." But the exhibit's timing has nothing to do with political correctness, according to Wynton's brother Branford, who attended a recent preview. "It's beyond that," he says. "He's not a great African-American painter, he's a great ... painter." Branford, who recorded an album to complement the show, credits Bearden for awakening his interest in visual art.

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