In this, the 100th episode of A brush with…, Marlene Dumas talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.
Dumas was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1953 and lives and works in Amsterdam. She is a painter whose intensity is unrivalled. Using found images and responding to memory, she has the ability to seduce and repel, to lull and to shock, often all in a single image or group of works. She is endlessly daring in her questioning of her medium and what it can do, in the unorthodox formats and scale she chooses for her imagery, in the way she reflects on historic art and ideas, movies and literature, and in her unflinching confrontation of her own life.
Dead Marilyn, 2008
Collection: Kravis Collection. Photography: Peter Cox, Eindhoven. Copyright: Marlene Dumas. Courtesy image: Studio Dumas
Her paintings and drawings are a means of responding to external events and internal feelings in ways that can be absurd, confounding, funny and profoundly affecting. And while her themes and language are consistent, she is always pushing herself to new territory and breaking boundaries.
She discusses the early influence of comic illustration, the enduring effect on her of Francisco Goya’s work, how she grew to love the work of Edgar Degas, Edvard Munch and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres after first dismissing them, and her admiration for Nicole Eisenman and Diane Arbus, among others.
She also gives insight in her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including, “What is art for?”.
Homage to Michelangelo, 2012.
Collection: Pinault Collection. Credits photography: Peter Cox, Eindhoven. Copyright: Marlene Dumas. Courtesy image: Studio Dumas
- Marlene Dumas: Mourning Marsyas, Frith Street Gallery, London, until 16 November
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture app.
The free app offers access to a vast range of international cultural organisations through a single download, with new guides being added regularly. They include some of the world’s most celebrated museums of modern and contemporary art, in which Marlene Dumas has had solo exhibitions. Among them are the National Portrait Gallery and Tate in the UK and, in the US, the Museum of Modern Art, ICA Boston and the Museum of Contemporary Art, or MOCA, Los Angeles. If you download Bloomberg Connects, you’ll discover that the guide to MOCA has in-depth features on solo exhibitions by two major contemporary artists, Olafur Eliasson and Josh Kline, including focuses on important works and video content.