8/21/2006

Marlene Dumas

21 comments:

Painter said...

lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

zipthwung said...

I was watching this thing on ovation about the Satcchi artists - the artists are intervieiwed appearing relazed, well lit and its hard not to like them, or at least see them as people.

The downside of that is that they seem like everyone else - and then you realize thay are just like everyone else. It came as quite an epiphany to me, being of the cloth.

Constelations of artists, expanding flaming gas balls...I could wax lyically and rhapsodic but I hate that shit. And so too, do I hate this big dumb head.

zipthwung said...

RIVER OF CRIME

We need to know there is a best
Because we fear there’s nothing left
But emptiness as we grow old
Hoping our memories are gold

JD said...

I've always been somewhat partial to Dumas' work: I like the way she works the heads in series, allowing strange stuff to happen with the materials, and some of the subject matter has been really strong. I liked that series of models' faces she did (or were they simply titled "beautiful girls" or something?). The way they maintained their beauty yet became un-beautiful because of the way those paintings were made was intriguing. That said, I feel like Dumas' work is way overhyped right now, both critically and market-wise. There's starting to be a repetitive quality to the work, and I feel like that super-intuitive, accident-prone way she has with the materials needs to be pushed somewhere else at this point. I'm wanting a bit more intention from this artist.

youth--less said...

Is she over hyped ...or at the top of her game, getting the recognition she deserves?

Hey Z--do you like Marilyn Minter any better? Same content, more technique? I thought not.

arebours said...

what is the context of this?seems gratuiously sickly

zipthwung said...

nostalgia

zipthwung said...

You know the other day I sensitized some hand made papyrus with photoemulsion and exposed it to the spiritual truth. I think I recorded a fart. Spiritus mundi!

nostalgie pour la boue!

no-where-man said...

its fashion baby,.. fashion.

zipthwung said...

We have to be careful, of course, when we talk about "the good bits of poverty." Poverty is, after all, the world's number one cause of premature death. No amount of what the French call nostalgie de la boue (nostalgia for mud) or paeans to "the noble savage" can change that fact.

"This is the circle of bourgeois nostalgia for naivety," warned Theodor Adorno in Minima Moralia. "The soullessness of those in the margins of civilization, forbidden self-determination by daily need, at once appealing and tormenting, becomes a phantasm of soul to the well-provided-for, whom civilization has taught to be ashamed of the soul."

http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70120-0.html

I dont know about sexism but MOMUS seems pretty smart - I'd like to see him go head to head with Damien Hirst.

STEVE: It must have felt strange to actually have a gallery show.
MOMUS: I felt like a fraud. (laughs) But I got the illusion of being a visual artist. And I'm of the generation of pop musicians who long to be artists, just as the artists of the same generation long to be rock stars. People like Martin Creed, Georgina Starr, and Damien Hirst all have bands as side projects.
STEVE: I read your piece on Matthew Collings, so I know you're not too invested in the YBAs.
MOMUS: They're just too slick. It seems like people want to turn away from that now. Weirdly enough they trust a total pervert like Henry Darger instead. But people always respect the power of private fetish.
STEVE: Some would call Damien Hirst the same thing, with money added.
MOMUS: But in Britain he's just thought of as a restauranteur, an all-purpose celebrity. They don't think of him as an artist. He's not going to be referenced by the current generation of art students as a role model. They know what the Damien Hirst route is … you get ten years of a lot of money and fame, and then you just become a laughing stock.

************************

You hear that damien? You are a laughing stock. But on TV in 1996 you seemed like a nice kid.

Uncle Jesse said...

i really like marlene dumas' paintings. they are very fresh looking, and daring. she's a pro. i don't think she gets enough hype.
i want some marlene dumas brand vodka, and action figures.

zipthwung said...

MATHS

kelli said...

The hype about being overhyped comes from her auction prices ( being one of the few living female artists to cross 1 million). But the auction market makes no sense at all. Kara Walker's work is only about $300,000 ( for one of the big installation pieces). I think she is a better artist than Dumas both in terms of influence and the individual attributes of her work. But they are both more interesting than Richard Prince who has insanely high auction prices.
Maybe we can just agree it shouldn't matter at least critically because the secondary market is controlled by a few people and has bizarre standards of value.

Martin said...

love her.

zipthwung said...

blam, blam, blam, kerpow!

this looks a little like mary boone.

I dont think dumas is overhyped, cuz I havenbt heard it.

THis looks like Ida Applebroog goth more than minters glam punk

poppy said...

mary boone is hot, i want that dark washy portrait...
when we see an artist repeating a device that seems to come easily we quickly call them a sell out.. then pretty much everypainter is a damn sell out that has made anything of it... if they haven't found success in their lifetime, then we say poor fucker..

zipthwung said...

repetition is the soul of invention

-Roberta Smith

no-where-man said...

i heard something about mary boone and being under glass top tables - can anyone expand on this?

youth--less said...

‘I don't have any conception of how big an average head is, I've never been interested in anatomy. In that respect I relate like children do. What is experienced as most important is seen as the biggest, irrespective of actual or factual size. In the movies everything is larger than life and yet you experience that as real(istic); all my faces are much bigger than human scale. From blowing up to zooming in, for me the “close-up” was a way of getting rid of irrelevant background information and by making the facial elements so big, it increased the sense of abstraction concerning the picture frame. The elimination of the background also did away with the place of being and environmental context.'

jpegCritic said...

I'd buy it for a dollar.

Amaury Salas said...

this looks like mewtwo being humanized, ja.