Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave
Mid-career Exhibit at MoMA Shows Sex, Life, Death
Dec 3, 2008
"Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave" is a collection of approximately 70 paintings and 35 drawings, which will be exhibited in two separate galleries in MoMA. The collection spans her 30-year career.
“Marlene Dumas is one of the most intriguing painters working today,” according to Connie Butler, curator of the exhibition, “Her exploration of portraiture and engagement with many of the most difficult social issues of our time is truly unique, as is her continuing commitment to painting as a relevant and powerful medium.”
About Marlene Dumas
Marlene Dumas was born in Capetown, South Africa, in 1953, but moved to the Netherlands in her early twenties to pursue further studies in art. She attended Ateliers ’63 in Haarlem (now de Ateliers in Amsterdam) through 1978 and has lived and worked in Amsterdam ever since.
As a white South African female living in Western Europe, Dumas explores topics such as self and sex through portraits. Like many contemporary artists, Dumas' subjects are based almost wholly on photographs published in newspapers and magazines, as well as personal Polaroid photographs. However, she does not attempt to create exact copies of the photograph – rather using the visual image as a source to which she adds psychological value. Dumas is also a writer and critic – often commenting on her own work and writing about her experiences as an artist.
Recurring Theme of Life and Death
Much of Dumas' works has a recurring theme of life and death – her subjects include children, pregnant women, and corpses. Even when her subjects are children, the paintings have a dark presence: Die Baba (The Baby, 1985), for instance, conveys the mysteriousness and the sometimes threatening countenances of children.
Much of her paintings are monochromatic washes and in a word, could be described as "disturbing" because of the emotional depth. Her portrait subjects almost never smile, and seem to be harboring dark secrets or ominous thoughts. Her paintings on sexual themes include erotic scenes as well as male and female nudes, and are reminiscent of those of Egon Schiele, but with a goth-like twist.
The title of the exhibit itself is based on an oil painting of a person leaning forward with outstretched arms-- one Dumas painted five years ago. Explaining her choice of this title for this retrospective, Dumas wrote this year:
I am the woman who does not know/ where she wants to be buried anymore./ When I was small, I wanted a big angel on my grave/ with wings like in a Caravaggio painting./ Later I found that too pompous./ So I thought I’d rather have a cross./ Then I thought—a tree./ I am the woman who does not know/ if I want to be buried anymore./ If no one goes to graveyards anymore/ if you won’t visit me there no more/ I might as well have my ashes in a jam jar/ and be more mobile./ But let’s get back to my exhibition here./ I’ve been told that people want to know,/ why such a somber title for a show?/ Is it about artists and their mid-life careers,/ or is it about women’s after-50 fears?/ No, let me make this clear:/ It is the best definition I can find/ for what an artist does when making art/ and how a figure in a painting makes its mark./ For the type of portraitist like me/ this is as wide as I can see.
Among the more recent works in the exhibition is Dead Marilyn (2008), based on an autopsy photograph of Marilyn Monroe. The exhibit also features some fresh paintings just completed by Dumas and on display for the first time in the United States. Dumas will give a lecture at the Celeste Bartos Theater (4 West 54 St.) in which she will present her work and talk about the exhibition.
The New York exhibit will run from December 14 to February 16, 2009 at MoMA and then move on to The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, where it will be on view from March 26 through June 21, 2009.
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