Dimensions
256 x 296 x 29mm
Marlene Dumas, a South African-born, Amsterdam-based painter, is one of the world's most admired artists, a titan of contemporary painting. She recalls in her work the painterly gestures of Expressionism while combining the critical distance of Conceptual art with the pleasures of eroticism. Through her delicately painted oil-on-canvas or ink-and-watercolour depictions of the female form as well as portraits of children and erotic scenes, she comments on the state of painting today. What does it mean to be a woman working within the predominantly male genre of expressionist painting? The artist often depicts women: their expressions, their body and facial typologies, their self-image, their ideals.
The relationships between art and female beauty - or between art-historical models and twentieth-century supermodels - are constant themes in her work. Dumas does not paint from life but deliberately chooses 'stock' images from a variety of sources, from magazine cuttings to picture postcards to Old Master paintings, as re-observed through her contemporary perspective. Since the late 1970s she has exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions at the Tate Gallery, London (1996), the Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (1998), the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp (1999) , the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2002). Her work has been shown in some of the world's top international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1995 and 2005), where she represented the Netherlands in 1995.
New York artist Barbara Bloom interviews Dumas on questions contemporary women artists are asked, from issues of intellectual process to the representation of the self.
Dominic van den Boogerd surveys themes in Dumas' work in relation to a range of conceptual legacies in depictions of the human figure.
Art journalist and former Editor of Vogue Italia Mariuccia Casadio focuses on Dumas' painting Josephine (1997), reflecting on the iconic legacy of Josephine Baker.
The update section by American art critic Jan Avgikos surveys Marlene Dumas' work from 1999 to present.
