One afternoon in 1985, Russell Goings went to the Chinatown apartment of his friend Romare Bearden to give the artist a rubdown. For several years Mr. Goings had seen Bearden suffering from a persistent cold and a steady ache in his right shoulder, ailments Bearden waved off as the result of allergies and calcium deposits. The previous day he had finally gone to a specialist, and as he removed his T-shirt for the massage, Mr. Goings saw dye stains on his skin. They indicated the location of the bone cancer the doctor had discovered.
Faced with such unsparing evidence of mortality, the painter and his friend arrived at a compact, unspoken but mutually understood. As Bearden talked about art, creative process, influence, racial identity and other subjects, Mr. Goings would record the disquisitions. By the time Bearden died in 1988, Mr. Goings had accumulated 40 hours of audio tape and four handwritten diaries, as well as substantial bodies of correspondence and artwork.
"He knew he was dying, and he would often tell me, 'I've got so much to say,'" Mr. Goings recalled in a recent interview. "He was very aware of the historical importance. He wanted to pass it on. And so he let me behind the veil. I acquired a side of him that nobody else had ever seen." [...]
| Continue Samuel G. Freedman's New York Times article "An Artist Talked and the World Listens"
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