Marlene Dumas: Image as a Burden

The Tate Modern Interior (2015)

Image By: Amanda Chain

Yesterday was the last day of "Image as a Burden" at the Tate Modern. The South African-native and Dutch transplant, Marlene Dumas is known for her portraiture and philosophical interpretations on image and beauty. Her works are taken from secondary sources, never does she have someone sitting in front of her. She uses stills and photographs and interprets those images to create a work distinct from its original form. This exhibit “Image As a Burden” takes its name from a work earlier in her career.

Her work is rife with her own experiences to interpret deeper meaning. There is a sense of familiarity with her work that isn’t like portraiture you may have seen. The details are few, but the emotion and personalities are many, giving the works a relatable quality. Some of the figures she paints are anonymous in the sense that they lack the detail and precision that make the individuals singular, but take on a cartoonish emphasis of emotion that make them rather recognizable.

Some of the figures however, are familiar because they are of individuals with celebrity clout. In an earlier post I mentioned her work "Blue Amy" which is of the late singer Amy Winehouse. There was also a fantastic piece of the late Princess Diana wearing an exquisite pink satin gown. He emphasis on color in these two works demonstrate the incredible range of Dumas whose ability to bring out fabrics and setting are reminiscent to me of the more renown Dutch artist Vermeer.

"Omar and Osama Bin Laden" by Marlene Dumas

Photograph By: Amanda Chain

By far one of the most compelling portraits I saw was actually a pair. The images featured Osama Bin Laden and his son Omar Bin Laden. What made the works so peculiar to me was the emphasis on the juxtaposition of love and hate. Osama Bin Laden as a figure is contentious for a number of reason not least for his role in Al Qaeda. What is less known about Osama is his tenuous relationship with his family cause by his terrorist activities and political beliefs. Omar famously said in an interview in 2009: "My father hated his enemies more than he loved his sons." It is peculiar that Dumas arranged the portraiture in this way: son above the father. It serves as a reminder that behind politics are personalities and relationships, and familial ones especially give deeper insight into the minds of political figures.

At the turn of the century, Dumas became interested in representations of war which frequently took the form of dead terrorists, martyrs, and the escalation of conflicts in the Middle East. She went back to earlier material to illustrate the personal anxiety that comes with global tragedies.

One of the most compelling works was her 2010 work Against the Wall. This large canvas is set on the the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. The wall is seen as an object of religious affection, contention, and barrier to reconciliation between Israel and Palestine. She sets the figures in context of the large architectural structure to make the viewer aware of the scale and landscape and how this juxtaposition plays on the meaning with the physicality of territorial issues.

"Against the Wall" (2010) By Marlene Dumas

Photograph By: Amanda Chain

The loss of Dumas’ mother had a profound effect on her work. A number of her works exhibit loneliness and an attempt to see into the figures rather than see who they appear to be on the outside. In describing her work Dumas wrote: "There is the image (source photography) you start with and the image (the painted image) you end up with, and they are not the same. I wanted to give more attention to what the painting foes to the the image, not only to what the image does to the painting. It is clear that Dumas is attempting to give the viewer the opportunity to truly see. There is so much of a person that an image hides and her work is aimed at displaying intention, motive, feeling and at times disgust through her interpretation. 

Music, Curation, and the End of the Avant-Garde

"Curationism: How Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else" 

by David Balzer

Photography By Amanda Chain

2 May 2015

I rarely get to these coffee house lectures anymore, so I was so pleased to get a ticket for the debate on Music and Curation (and I use capitals for a reason).

When I walked in to Brilliant Corners I had absolutely no idea what to expect. Part of me figured I would be slightly outcast. Nerd at heart with a desire to be a curator one day despite the spiteful reputation they tend to have among artists. This debate, although somewhat cynical in nature raised many valid points and many more questions than could be answered.

Hosted by Pluto Press, the debate was chaired by David Balzer, the author of Curationism: How Curating Took Over the World of Art and Everything Else. There were three other speakers: Frances Morgan, deputy editor of The Wire magazine; Salomé Voegelin, artist and author; and Adam Harper, a music critic. Each were coming from different angles within the industry, and tried to incorporate each other's angles a nuances.

The opening debate surrounded the issue of what is curating? At what point do we call ourselves curators rather than creators and how does that influence music. Of course value and a sense of professionalism come with the connotation of curator, but this is based on pre-conceived notions on what a curator is. There is a sense of authority, and Ms. Voegelin was adamant about this role as an unnecessary one. My favorite analogy she used was that "Because I'm making a salad and people have used carrots and tomatoes does it mean I'm curating a salad, no, I'm creating it." As valid as this may be, it did sit uneasy with me. There should always be a sense of acknowledging the work of others that you then use and to appreciate how they have helped in the creating process. If I were to attempt that sort of outlook in academia or literature I would be deemed a plagiarist and rightly so.

There is a sense however, that curating is simply a fancy word for picking. Is a curator simply there to put the pieces on display and the viewer sit passively by? No there is of course a negotiation and dialogue going on and the responsiveness of the viewer is imperative. I'd like to think of the curator as a communicator. Someone who's job is to make clear the meaning of the work.

I found that the more museums I go to, the more I appreciate a well-curated exhibit. There is a fine balance that requires a mediation of knowledge to take place. Yes, as Ms. Voegelin asserted curating is a socio-political activity, and the sooner museums realize how much is at stake in that relationship of the dialogue the better we as absorbers of culture are. Balzer as he writes in his book, curating has a long history within western history and there is nothing new about the concept, however the process has to evolve with the time. We must escape the colonial narrative that most national museums have, and begin to adopt a new globalized, post-modern perspective.

So in the end did we answer the question does the Avant-Garde still exist? Well to be honest, this was only an afterthought of the debate. As Mr. Harper noted, there is a lot of historical baggage with the term and there are many ways of saying the same thing. Is anything ever new? Aren't the counter-culturalists just finding more from our past and making it contemporary? To be fair, I think there is something to be said about hybridization and blending of works to make something new and different. That is essentially how the genre of Hip Hop began bringing it with it a new dimension of popular culture and avant-garde-ism.

However, as this debate raised many questions and concerns for me as a wannabe curator. However, in the end I find the same to be true. With any position of communication and authority there must be an awareness of that role and an attempt to make it as participatory and educated as possible. For now I leave you with this question: Should we have curators at all, or are we just closing ourself off from a world of possibilities from the disorganized chaos they try to organize for us?