Marlene Dumas & Edvard Munch at the Munch Museum in Oslo (October 9, 2018). I come from a country, South Africa, that has been a colony both of Holland and of the British. Dumas clearly draws a parallel between the Nazi regime and the policies and practices of the apartheid. artist statement. Image from Marlene Dumas website Measuring your own Grave. Sweet Nothings. Even if I have to admit I have never seen in the history of painting such a wide palette of colors for the surface of the naked human body as I have seen in the paintings of Marlene Dumas. Through the image of an angry and fearful monster-like little girl, Dumas powerfully and emotionally paints about love and motherhood. To her, "There is no beauty, if it doesn't show some of the terribleness of life. Hans Theo Richter-Preis für Zeichnung und Grafik 2017, Sächsischen Akademie der Künste, Dresden, 2017 Honorary Doctorate, University of Antwerp, 2015 Johannes Vermeer Award 2012, Delft, 2012 Honorary degree, Doctor of Fine Arts, University of Cape Town, 2012 Rolf Schock Prize in the Visual Arts, Stockholm, 2011 The Guardian / "Marlene Dumas Artist Overview and Analysis". Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Marlene Dumas, South African-born Amsterdam-based artist, is perhaps one of the most significant practising contemporary painters. The abstract painters always insist on their connection with the visible reality, while the so called figurative artists insist that what they really care about, is the abstract qualities of life. As a white person in South Africa, using self-portrait is a strong political statement, which makes the painting even more powerful. I don’t like being paternalised and colonised by every Tom, Dick and Harry that comes along (male or female).”. It doesn't travel with the speed of light. See more ideas about Marlene dumas, Dumas, South african artists. / Notes and Texts 1982-2014, Website Marlene Dumas: resources and references, The Worth of Living and Loving: An Interview with Marlene Dumas', Rapture and rejects: the beautiful, flawed world of Marlene Dumas, Marlene Dumas about her exhibition "Moonrise. Race, sexuality, guilt and innocence, violence and tenderness. February 2, 2015, By Rodney Bolt / It doesn't travel with the speed of light. She is best known for her portraits, all inspired by printed images or photographs which she has (often, but not always) taken Helena has commented about this work that it is one of the best paintings her mother has ever done. ", "No painting can exist without the tension of what it figures and what it concretely consists of. The Meaning of Drawing: drawings by ten Dutch Artists/A Priori tekenen (exhibition catalogue), The Hague/Amsterdam: Netherlands Office for fine Arts/Makkom, 1987: p. 46/143 [compilation of the texts ‘The Meaning of Drawing’, The Meaning of Drawing: drawings by ten Dutch Artists, 1986 and ‘The Surrealist Tradition’, A Priori tekenen, 1987] Marlene Dumas was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and raised on her family’s vineyard in the countryside. The girl seems angry as she stares petulantly toward the viewer. In it lies the unconscious suspicion relayed by media and populist groups that all Arab bearded men in Europe are potential terrorists. Working in a style that has been called neo-expressionist and conceptualist, Dumas creates lush, often disturbing and unnerving images of racial, sexual, and cultural subjectivity… Marlene Dumas is a masterful presenter of what lies beneath. She looks behind her, to where she comes from, with an ironic smile. I might not be the only authority, nor the best authority, but I want to participate in the writing of my own history. Statements. Dumas in the painting does not seem as light but much more thoughtful. All Rights Reserved, Marlene Dumas. His latest works have evolved to figurative expression and are inspired by the works of Egon Schiele, Marlene Dumas, Leonor Fine, and the Fauve style of KeesVan Dongen. The upper part of the body is bluish while the rest is yellow to white; the face is even paler. Cherchez la Femme Peintre! Sorte attests to the artist’s ongoing interest in the dialectic between the physicality of the human body and the metaphysical themes that attend its demise. The picture depicts an ordinary young bearded man, likely of North-African descent, who could be anyone's neighbor as the title suggests. [Internet]. Why should artists be validated by outside authorities? the saatchi galleryIn Young Boys, Marlene Dumas’s line-up of ghostly lads is stark and oppressed against the ominous background, trailing off in the distance into mere sketchy traces of suggestion. Dumas does not idealise the body, but shows it frankly as a source of temptation and pleasure, taking photographs from sex magazines and Polaroid pictures as her models. The generalizing title of "The Painter" adds another layer to consider. Raised in white South Africa knee deep amongst apartheid, the artist learned young that life was a study in contradictions and duality. Marlene Dumas. The pleasure of what it could mean and the pain of what it's not.". Like many figurative painters who bloomed in the 60s and 70s after the pop cultural explosion, Dumas works primarily from photographs garnered from the pages of contemporary newspapers and magazines, or film stills, oftentimes co-opting portions of an image like an abstract painter, and presenting it absent of its original context. There is a heaviness to the paintings of the South African-born, Dutch-based artist Marlene Dumas, as if they might fall off the wall and break the floor. June 15, 2008. She looks behind her, to where she comes from, with an ironic smile. I don't go to a gym. Marlene Dumas The Pilgrim , 2006 The Pilgrim , 2006, is a tantalizing work by South African artist Marlene Dumas , … p.cm. Marlene Dumas is a South African artist who has lived and worked in Amsterdam since 1978. August 2018, By Claire Messud / Double Takes. in my work as elsewhere in life, i guess i always look for some measure of ambivalence. They are all supposed to help you, but I like to stay in bed, where I have a chance to reflect, like Rossellini. (illustrated in color). This survey exhibition of her paintings and drawings spans the last four decades—a time of turmoil in the world, and occasionally in her own life, which she has responded to with works of acute observation and searing emotional impact. 37 (1993), p.140; and included in Marlene Dumas, Sweet Nothings. She constantly probes reflection on our individual responsibility, as well as her own, through her explorations into society's darker themes such as death, war, racism, and sex. Catalogue of an exhibition held at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, June 22-Sept. 22, 2008, and at The Museum of Modern Art, N.Y., Dec. 14-Feb. 16,2009. Castello di Rivoli, The Particularity of Being Human, Francis Bacon Marlene Dumas, September-October 1995, p. 133 (illustrated in color). After beginning her art degree at the University of Cape Town, she decided to continue her studies in the Netherlands: the country where she’d build her career as an artist, and still lives today. The Lancet Psychiatry / By taking her entirely out of her original context, Dumas deceives the viewer and makes him/her look at her child in a very distinctive way. However, this portrait is based on a well-known newspaper photograph of Mohammed Bouyeri, convicted in 2004 for the murder of Dutch filmmaker and journalist Theo van Gogh. When it was exhibited together with The Neighbor at the Galerie Paul Andriesse in Amsterdam for the first time, the two works were notably shown in the gallery office and not in the exhibition space. I have come to show the disease symptoms of my time. Life and work. 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