From the beginning, language has played an important role in the work of Marlene Dumas. Her earliest collages make use of text, and she often writes poetical monikers or captions directly onto her drawings, such as "The Eyes of the Night Creatures" or "Miss Interpreted." Over the last 30 years, the artist has written texts ranging from aphorisms, statements and short poetic pieces to longer analytical essays. Her writing focuses on her own work, discussing its subject matter, its politics, background and source material, as well as its critical reception and her own cultural position as an artist. "I am always 'not from here,'" she writes in one text (a poem), "even though I try to know / or understand 'what's going on' and / what the rules are and how they / keep on changing and what that means. / When looking at images I'm not lost, / but I'm uneasy." Sweet Nothings, originally published in a long out-of-print (and rare) Dutch edition in 1998 and now revised and expanded, provides a selection of her best and most representative writings from 1982–2014.
Marlene Dumas (born 1953) is a South African artist who works in a range of media including painting, collage and prints. She moved to Amsterdam for her studies in 1976 and continues to live and work there. She often strips her subjects of their original contexts, working with—while often transgressing and deconstructing—traditional Western modes of representation. She represented the Netherlands in 1995 at the 46th Venice Biennale, and has enjoyed numerous solo museum exhibitions and retrospectives devoted to her work around the world since then.
"Chlorosis (Lovesick)", (1994) is reproduced from Sweet Nothing.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The Economist
The Editors
Ms Dumas makes her political subjects personal by lending them humanity and pathos; she makes her personal subjects political by giving them historically charged titles. Her ability to merge the public and the private, and to link modern history and popular culture with the human condition, is a strong part of her appeal.
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"A title determines the way one looks at the image. What is depicted is desire, what is central is deficiency. It all becomes more complex. The aim of my work, I have come to believe, has always been to arouse in my audience (as well as myself) an experience of empathy with my subject matter (be it a scribble, a sentence, or a face) more so than sympathy. Sympathy suggests an agreement of temperament, and an emotional identification with a person. Empathy doesn’t necessarily demand that. The contemplation of the work (when it ‘works’) gives a physical sensation similar to that suggested by the work. I’m not a stylist, I’m a sensualist." So writes South African-born painter Marlene Dumas in Sweet Nothings: Notes and Texts 1982-2014, a featured title at our store at Frieze New York. Featured image is "Jesus (sketch for the perfect Lover)", 1994. continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 8 x 7.5 in. / 256 pgs / 35 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $27.50 LIST PRICE: CANADA $37.5 ISBN: 9781938922831 PUBLISHER: D.A.P./Walther König, Köln AVAILABLE: 3/24/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA LA ASIA
Published by D.A.P./Walther König, Köln. By Marlene Dumas. Edited by Mariska Van Den Berg.
From the beginning, language has played an important role in the work of Marlene Dumas. Her earliest collages make use of text, and she often writes poetical monikers or captions directly onto her drawings, such as "The Eyes of the Night Creatures" or "Miss Interpreted." Over the last 30 years, the artist has written texts ranging from aphorisms, statements and short poetic pieces to longer analytical essays. Her writing focuses on her own work, discussing its subject matter, its politics, background and source material, as well as its critical reception and her own cultural position as an artist. "I am always 'not from here,'" she writes in one text (a poem), "even though I try to know / or understand 'what's going on' and / what the rules are and how they / keep on changing and what that means. / When looking at images I'm not lost, / but I'm uneasy." Sweet Nothings, originally published in a long out-of-print (and rare) Dutch edition in 1998 and now revised and expanded, provides a selection of her best and most representative writings from 1982–2014.
Marlene Dumas (born 1953) is a South African artist who works in a range of media including painting, collage and prints. She moved to Amsterdam for her studies in 1976 and continues to live and work there. She often strips her subjects of their original contexts, working with—while often transgressing and deconstructing—traditional Western modes of representation. She represented the Netherlands in 1995 at the 46th Venice Biennale, and has enjoyed numerous solo museum exhibitions and retrospectives devoted to her work around the world since then.
