Marlene Dumas The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly by Jolie van Leeuwen

(From the catalog) It is not merely that the other is a mystery to the self;. it is that the other is a mystery of the self. —Thomas McEvilley, Art and Otherness Human figures, nudes, portraits—a classical repertoire—inhabit the paintings and drawings of Marlene Dumas. Although figurative language is closely connected with a reality that can be described, Dumas, in fact, uses the figurative in a sly way. Things are not always what they seem. In this exhibition, a selection from recent series of drawings and small paintings, the emphasis is upon works that have the nature of a drawing. In her newest paintings, Dumas uses color frugally, and the painterly treatment and compositional problems of fore- and background yield to work that is more like drawings done in paint. In the past decade, since she began showing her work, Dumas’s subject matter has remained the same. Those seeing it for the first time will gain a clear insight into what preoccupies and what motivates her. The work centers on people—in all their variety and inexplicableness; people as the intersection between experiences, feelings, ideas—and their connections with the world around them. Most of the pictures are based upon photographs culled from the mass media or Polaroids shot by Dumas herself, who takes these images, reinvents them visually, and invests them with a reality of their own. In doing this, she allows us to witness the convoluted and uneven path between intention and result. Her work unlocks a chain of associative thoughts and feelings. Each object, when looked at, already implies an identification, but Dumas avoids the glib or simplistic interpretation. She creates a web of different propositions. In offering viewers the chance to appropriate her visual material, she provides them with the possibility of creating both the image and its significance. This open-ended construction is offered with the knowledge that our certainties and truths rest on quicksand; nothing is static, life is in constant flux, and our positions and relationships are changing continually. Thus, it is neither harmony nor aesthetics but a state of conflict that lies at the heart of Dumas’s work. The image of the girl with a veil, surrounded by other drawings of nude adults and cutely dressed little girls in the series of drawings entitled Give Me the Head of John the Baptist (1992), is very confusing. From all iconological point of view, the image is immediately reminiscent of the apocryphal story of Saint Veronica, who wiped the face of Christ with her veil, or handkerchief. But the sketchily drawn dolly figure on the cloth bears more resemblance to a picture by a small child. At the same time, the girl’s expression contradicts her seeming innocence; her glance is bewildered, almost malicious. The viewer segues into a multireactionary mode. Are we confronted with thoughts of a criminal inquiry, in which an abused child must describe by means of a drawing that she has been violated? Or are we looking at a scene showing a magical ceremony, a bewitching? Is the girl not the innocent child of our preconceptions but someone practicing black voodoo with small dolls? This would be in more accordance with the title: the story of Salome and her passion for John the Baptist. The oppressive nature of the image is an outgrowth of the assumed intimacy of the scene, which is deeply disturbed by the conflict between the good, the bad, and the ugly in the appearance of the fragile young girl. Marlene Dumas does not advocate mitigating circumstances—rather, circumstantial evidence. In one image, Dumas combines several possibilities and considerations—not like layers or juxtapositions that cancel each other out but like a tumultuous situation in which everything happens at once and every option remains valid. She believes that all aspects of experience, all knowledge are interrelated, and she expresses this in a pulsating, explosive language. Carefully modeled parts extrude into sketchiness. Recognizable sections suddenly merge into a blur or a more abstract painterly treatment. This dynamic, multifaceted approach places the work between perception and representation. It is based equally on the senses and on logical understanding . Text is an integral part of the work of Marlene Dumas. She is a writer, and her work is both poetic and provocative. Her texts are imbued with a crude and vigorous street lingo. The titles and texts woven into her work move the accent away from the image to another level. Through the immediacy of her drawings—a reflection of daily events and intrusions—we experience the untrammeled fusion of text and image. The ink drawing Schets voor Monument von de Vrede [Sketch for a monument of peace, 1993] shows a huge, well-formed penis hanging on a gallows. On the ground below stand two tiny cartoon figures, waving their arms. The inscription reads, Sketch for a monument of peace, giving a comic twist to the adoration of the phallus. It is a statement on the creations of large-scale sculptures, particularly some of the (Dutch) postwar public sculptures, which seem, in their erect attitude, to be more war memorial than monument to peace. Dumas’s work rarely lacks humor; this balances the images that, in themselves, are often sober if not lugubrious. The self-mockery and the wry smile area tonic in an artworld that tends to take itself too seriously, that mistakes pomposity for profundity, and thereby becomes increasingly distanced from the essence of life. In her recent small-scale paintings, Dumas explores body language as a form of communication. Does the uninhibited position of the naked girl with arms wide open in Liberty (1992) reflect an act of freedom? Her awkward expression suggests, rather, shyness or shame. Her arms extend from her sturdy young body like thin wires, ending in hands with suction pads—as if, in her nakedness, she might attach herself to the canvas, hoping to find refuge there. The uneasy interaction between .viewer and viewed is played out. One cannot tell the girl’s exact age, but she is preadolescent. She does not realize that she has been used as an allegory for adult concepts. Dumas often uses text metaphorically, linking separate areas in ways that address the very nature 6f art. With the title The Image As Burden (1993), she creates a humorous connection between the picture of a man carrying a person and the artist struggling with images. At the same time, the metaphor imposes a distance between viewer and image, and this protects one from becoming too emotionally involved. Carrying another person may be construed as a loving, intimate act, but this scene is arnbiguous—not so much an admission of weakness, in the sense that anything goes, anything can represent anything else, but, rather, the idea that our stance is always a complex one. In the picture, the bodies have no sexual organs, so we cannot say with certainty which sex they represent, but it looks as if a man is carrying a woman in his arms. The horizontal body triggers endless associations: seduction and surrender, love and wounded helplessness, sleep, death. Attention is focused on the face; the body is absent—it is the unpainted shape on the canvas. The woman’s face is blueish white, and the expression is one of tortured mutilation. She has a ghostly look, and may, in fact, be dead. She is the beloved and the victim. This tense atmosphere—something has just happened or is about to happen—is often present in Dumas’s work, and it is displayed in a very sensual way. The moment of suspense is also erotic. Procrastination of the moment of fulfilled desire intensifies the interim, that makes it more exciting. The subject matter need not be sexually charged, it is the way that Dumas chooses to render her image that is erotic. Excitement is generated, for example, in the painting The View (1992), in which we peer—together with a girl whose back we see—into a bottomless, undelineated darkness. The paint is applied thinly with long, languid brushstrokes, the colors are undefined—all this echoes the seductive yet threatening mystery of what is to come. The moment that one thing spills into the next is almost palpable. When we consider that painting is a medium of stasis, we are struck by the artist’s ability to fill her work with such a sense of movement and change. The skilled hand of Dumas is seen at its best in two large series, Female (1993) and Black Drawings (1991–92). Some of these drawings began as a squirt of ink that trailed across the paper. The artist then worked on the details of the head, using the wet ink splotch. In some cases, she first drew the outline and then filled it in. Chance and intention are played out in an intimate, tense balance. Using the unsophisticated contrasts between light and dark, Dumas achieves remarkable sculptural effects. There are instances when the inky surface resembles the skin of an elderly person with its increasing transparency, or the visible bumps and blemishes of a face in close-up. Ink marks increase the dramatic impression when they resemble heavy shadows under the eyes, bleeding mouths, or stretch marks caused by emotions. It is not so much a question of presenting different types of people—after all, they all have black hair—or of making a portrait that really looks like someone, but of demonstrating an enormous diversity of expression and noting the vulnerability in these faces. Female and Black Drawings are not hierarchical series showing hundreds of faces of the famous, well-known, or unknown. In these two projects, Dumas undertakes to map out variety and similarity. The 210 women in Female are all different; they have their own individuality, yet they merge together under the heading Woman. Seen another way, all the faces may arise from moments of shifting identity and belong to one and the same woman. As Chaka Khan so convincingly sings, “1 am every woman, it’s all in me.” All kinds of programs may underlie the process of systematization on the basis of resemblances—biological, political, whatever. The idea behind this is always the same: to draw the distinction between one and the other. But the history that preceded the setting of the boundaries, determined by social impulses or the lust for power, is often fierce and bloody. Black Drawings consists of 111 drawings in black ink showing black people and one slate. The slate contributes a material touch of reality, and, in a simple, unostentatious way, complements the black skin of the drawings. The presentation of this group of blacks arouses conflicting feelings about our racial divisions. We are reminded of schoolbooks with photographs of the noble savage—ethnographical inventories that resemble catalogs of exotic plants. The melancholic blackness of Dumas’s work also arouses a sense of dread. In the top righthand corner is a picture of a girl with two braids. Her face is hidden behind a protesting hand, but, judging from her straight hair, she is white. She does not see the other heads, but what she would see if she dared to open her eyes—beauty, pride, despair, sorrow, anger, aggression—is all suggested. Are these general human characteristics or do they represent preconceptions that we attach to the other—notions nurtured by our frustrations, impotence, and deep fear of all that is unfamiliar. Although this work would make its impact felt anywhere, it is important to remember that Dumas grew up in a South Africa where the policy of apartheid permeated the whole of life. In Female and Black Drawings, Dumas questions the process of defining and ranking others on the grounds of being similar to or different from oneself. Faced with the dilemma of the self and the other and the unquenchable loneliness that is its concomitant, Dumas attempts to bridge the gap between the self and all the others, to unite groups by stressing what they have in common. The analogy irons out the differences that we have created by dividing the world into categories and labeling each part with its own separate and distinct definition. We live in an unstable society where everyday political and social battles are being fought. Overnight, the aggressor may become the victim. We have been liberated from the straitjacket of fixed sexual roles and all ideologies are up for auction. Identities shift, positions change; this is a key fact, but also an asset we should not sacrifice, certainly not for an all-too-easy quasi-moral model of political correctness. Marlene Dumas is cognizant of these dichotomies. Her work illustrates the conviction that we have only ourselves to rely upon. She presents her themes not as a cynical, sterile commentator on human existence but out of a deep, personal involvement. We cannot remain untouched, we are gripped by the throat, grabbed by the balls; this is pulsating life. translated from the Dutch by Wendie Shaffer Back to catalog page Galleries Directory | Levy Gallery Artists Registry | Publications & Artists | Email Moore College of Art and Design

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