Marlene Dumas at MoMA, New York

Measuring Your Own Grave

Marlene Dumas
Museum of Modern Art, New York
December 14, 2008 - February 16, 2009

-- Debra Wolf

Marlene Dumas' reflection of contemporary culture is anything but easy. On the contrary; the controversial painter's work is disturbing, raw, tender, dispassionate, and frequently sinister. Dumas is well known for this disquieting blend, using portraiture to examine complex social, racial and sexual identities.

In a survey spanning some 30 years, the Museum of Modern Art of New York shows off the virtuosity of the celebrated and provocative South African painter who makes her home in Amsterdam. “Measuring Your Own Grave,” exhibited first at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Los Angeles, features more than 70 canvases and 35 drawings, marking the first time such a large number of Dumas’ works has been shown to the American public.

Using photographs as a starting point, Dumas often transforms her subjects - infants, school children, porn stars, celebrities, terrorists - giving them a near monstrous quality as she couples vulnerability with an undercurrent of violence. The result yields a discomfiting depiction of humanity, or perhaps a mirror of our inhumanity; we are faced with convergent notions of innocence, eroticism, beauty, morality and mortality in an ambiguous and irresistible mix.

Dumas accomplishes this feat with more than her particular vision, but with masterful technique. Colors are an essential ingredient, equally evident in her 2008 Self Portrait at Noon with its eerie, wan quality as in her use of sumptuous red washes in Genetic Longing (1984). Compositions are defiantly sexual, as in Fingers (1990) and Porno as Collage (1993). Rapid brushwork animates the human body, creating a prickly tension that is particularly unnerving in her portrayals of corpses, among them the stunning Dead Girl (2002) and Jen (2005). The resulting works are horrifying, audacious and affecting, while her large-format cadavers are chilling.

No less striking are other paintings that require us to navigate Dumas' narrow passage between life and death. Among these is the eloquent series, Models (1994). 100 paper portraits (ink and pastel) hang in rows, filling three walls of a room. Faces - mostly young girls and young women - reveal a range of mask-like expressions as well as emotions we might expect: boredom, passive acceptance, impatience and annoyance. A single older face pierces the fluidity of smooth, young skin, along with a portrait of a snake with bulging eyes echoing the vacuous gaze of the surrounding models. We are left to consider the inherent conflict of individuality and the masses, the deceptive nature of the "image" itself and, our precarious manner of seeing and being seen.

Installation View of Models (1994). Ink and chalk on paper. 100 drawings, each 24 7/16 x 19 11/16" (62 x 50 cm). Van Abbemuseum Collection, Eindhoven) in the exhibition Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2008.
Photo by Brian Forrest.