So much was banned in South Africa because of the politics.ĭUMAS: Well, Nelson Mandela had been in the prison for so long and you weren’t allowed to see pictures of him. I went to see all the things that were censored and that we weren’t supposed to see. Instead I went looking for all of the banned books. I was suddenly in museums filled with art, and I couldn’t deal with that. But when I got to Europe it took me a long time to appreciate some of the old masters because I really didn’t know what to do with them-it was all angels and crosses and that sort of imagery. I had thought, having gone to school in South Africa, that I knew all about art. I had come to do a master’s at the university. How old were you when you took that trip?ĭUMAS: I was 23. Of course, in a book, it also happens that the big, tall paintings become small, and the small paintings start to look bigger.ĪLS: I want to go back to what you said about visiting Europe after growing up in South Africa. But a book has an intimacy in that you can hold it in your hand. And I do think, “Oh, these poor little things, can they still survive?” So that’s scary and alienating. The gallery can be a cold space, not a home space. Some of that intimacy gets a bit lost when they go into a gallery. When I’m in the studio with my paintings, I’m almost sitting on top of them. When I first arrived in Europe to see certain works, be it van Gogh or Rembrandt or modern art, I’d never seen them in the real before, and suddenly I saw how small Girl with a Pearl Earring is, or that it’s really about scale and color. Growing up in South Africa, I mainly saw paintings in books. I’ve been going through my notes and newspaper clippings from recent years that I’ve cut out.ĪLS: When you make a book of your paintings, as you’ve just done with your Myths & Mortals monograph, do you feel it’s a chance to get intimate with the work?ĭUMAS: Yes, because before that, the paintings are really just in my head or how I remember them or the experience of making them. I’m preparing for all of these lectures I’ve been asked to give.
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MARLENE DUMAS: I am in the studio, but I’m not painting at the moment. HILTON ALS: Darling Marlene, are you in your studio? I particularly wanted to hear about the amazing trajectory that her life had taken: from growing up under apartheid in South Africa to life among “Europeans” the development of her skills as an artist and the rewards and challenges of being a working mother and now a grandmother. When Interview called to mark the publication of her recent book, Marlene Dumas: Myths & Mortals, based on a suite of ink wash and oil paintings that she recently showed at David Zwirner in New York, I welcomed the opportunity to talk. Their aliveness was palpable.Īfter that, Marlene and I stayed in touch.
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In her images of Tennessee Williams, Marlon Brando, Jean Genet, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, among many others, Marlene created heartfelt works about gay or bisexual cultural figures seen from a different perspective-Marlene’s perspective-that made those familiar faces somehow more intimate. For my show, Marlene expanded on her fascinating “Great Men” series, a dramatic group of ink portraits she began in 2014. I had come to talk to her about contributing to an exhibition I curated celebrating the writer James Baldwin.
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I first met Marlene Dumas in the summer of 2017 in Amsterdam, where she has lived for the past 43 years.