April 22, 2009

Marlene Dumas










I saw a show at the MOMA over winter break that featured Marlene Dumas and for some reason she popped into my mind today so I thought I would share.

I had never heard of Marlene Dumas before my trip to the MOMA, but boy did she leave an impression. The startling uses of color, the expressive brushstrokes, the minimalist and simplistic portraiture and most definitely the haunting subjects left me feeling conflicted. On one hand the paintings are beautiful, however they also have this sad haunting energy about them. Some are downright frightening. In the exhibit there was a series of brightly colored newborn babies painted on an extremely large scale and their bodies were twisted and distorted in the most peculiar ways. Absolutely stunning, but definitely not your typical happy baby image. These babies portrayed by Dumas were in pain.

I don't know much about Dumas but I intend to do a little more research.

1 comment:

Jessie said...

The paintings of the corpses were particularly freaky. The wall of faces were an intriguing mix of simplistic line drawing and sophisticated portraits. She is definitely interesting and often disturbing!