Marlene Dumas, Waterproof Mascara, 2008, Öl auf Leinwand, 100 x 90 cm, Private Sammlung, © Marlene Dumas.

Marlene Dumas, Moshekwa, 2006, Öl auf Leinwnad, 130 x 110 cm, Private Sammlung, Courtesy Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp.

Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem, Porträt eines Narren, um 1596, Öl auf Holz, 46,5 x 33,5 cm, Collection Theater Instituut Nederland.

Judith Leyster, Porträt eines Mädchens mit Strohhut, um 1630, Öl auf Holz, 36,2 x 31 cm, Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck / Sammlung Rau für UNICEF.

Haus der Kunst
Prinzregentenstrasse 1
t + 49 89 21127-115
Münich
Tronies
Marlene Dumas and the Old Masters
October 29, 2010-February 6, 2011

The dialogue-exhibition contrasts works by Marlene Dumas with historical examples of the Tronie art form. Tronies are portrait paintings that are characterized by a particularly virtuosic handling of the artistic means, intense expressiveness and individual physiognomy. It was only recently that Tronies were discovered to be an independent form of painting through art historical research.

Tronies
The word Tronies comes from 16th and 17th Dutch usage and means 'head', 'face' or 'expression'. Tronies were initially painted from life as reference models of figures in historical paintings. They were particularly coveted by collectors as examples of an artist's signature. Tronies as a form of painting became more emancipated over the course of the 17th century: Such images were increasingly created as autonomous artworks and became available for sale on the art market. This development was encouraged, above all, by two young painters, Jan Lievens and Rembrandt in Leiden. Amsterdam, Delft and Haarlem were also important centers for Tronie production in the northern Netherlands. In the south, Tronies created by leading Old Masters, such as Peter Paul Rubens, Anton van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens, were also used to train artists in these painters' workshops. Unlike normal portraits, Tronies served no representative function. The heads were usually isolated and appeared almost as cut outs in front of neutral backgrounds. The identity of the models was a minor matter. In contrast to figurative paintings or those of religious figures, Tronies were not necessarily defined by their moral or narrative content. Rather, they explored the spectrum of human physiognomy and expressiveness and reflected characterological ideas that belong to the early days of psychology. The viewer is free to make his own associations.

The selection of Tronies presented here includes paintings, drawings and prints by late 16th century masters, including Frans Floris, the great Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, Van Dyck and Jordaens, Jan Lievens, Rembrandt and his students, as well as Michael Sweerts. Special emphasis is placed on the Haarlem School, with works by Leendert van der Cooghen, Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem, Hendrick Goltzius and Judith Leyster.

"I use second-hand images and first-hand emotions."

— Marlene Dumas

In this exhibition the Netherlandish heads are contrasted with works by Marlene Dumas from all decades of her career. In addition to other figurative motifs, drawn and painted representations of heads form a constant in the work of the artist, who was born in 1953 in Cape Town and moved to Holland in 1976. In contrast to the Old Masters, whose works were based on living models, Marlene Dumas works primarily with photographic reproductions from books, fashion or popular magazines, as well as from newspapers. In doing this she draws not only on images of well-known figures but also of crimes, catastrophes, etc. Her works are no remittance works. Themes include not only everyday occurrences, such as birth, love, sex, suffering, death and religion, but also Apartheid and stereotypes of racism.

Marlene Dumas does not regard her representations of heads as portraits. She already relaxes their connection to the original images through the ambiguous titles of her works. The often larger-than-life painted faces do not allow specific psychological interpretations. Marlene Dumas, for instance, presents Naomi Campbell as an icon without glamour (Naomi, 1995): The supermodel has been transformed into the interchangeable embodiment of a beautiful woman. Images of men who populate our visual memory also undergo metamorphoses. The Pilgrim (2006), for example, presents us with a suprisingly colorful image of Osama Bin Laden. The painting Waterproof Mascara (2008) recalls the Baroque metaphor of the world as a stage on which everyone has his assigned role to act.

The survey of works is made complete with a selection of drawings from the multiple-part series Females (1992-93), Jesus-Serene (1994), Models (1994) and Rejects (1994-). The series Females is a kind of encyclopedia of women that is founded on the opinion that every woman is beautiful. Jesus-Serene is a collection of male portraits based on images or sculptures of Jesus from all of art history. The selection also includes portraits of Marlene Dumas's colleagues and friends. Despite the diversity of the faces, they all share a serene expression. Models (1994) is concerned with icons of the mass media, such as film stars and cover girls. The muses and mistresses, who served as models for the Old Masters to represent Juno, Lucretia, or Bathsheba, are here, too. Time and again Marlene Dumas refers to works from the past, from Cranach to Caravaggio to Courbet.

The concept of the Tronie as an art form, which was only addressed within the scope of Rembrandt exhibitions, is now formulated for the first time in a dialogue with contemporary painting. In doing this, important similarities are made apparent, such as the immunity of the works to their interpretation as portraits. The exhibition is curated by León Krempel

The exhibition is accompanied by an international symposium on February 4, 2011.

A catalogue will be published by Haus der Kunst.

Marlene Dumas, Helena's Dream, 2008, Öl auf Leinwand, 130,5 x 110 cm, © Kunsthalle Bielefeld.

Jacob Jordaens, Studienkopf, um 1620/21, Öl auf Holz, 43,7 x 31 cm, Douai, Musée de la Chartreuse, Foto: Hugo Maertens.

Marlene Dumas, Measuring Your Own Grave, 2003, Oil on canvas, 55-1/8 x 55-1/8", private collection, © 2008 Marlene Dumas, photo by Andy Keate.

Marlene Dumas, Dead Marilyn, 2008, oil on canvas, 15-3/4 x 19-11/16 in., Courtesy of the artist and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp, © 2008 Marlene Dumas.

Marlene Dumas, Losing (Her Meaning), 1988, Oil on canvas, 19-11/16 x 27-9/16 in., Private Collection, Courtesy of Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam, © 2008 Marlene Dumas.

Marlene Dumas, The Blindfolded Man, 2007,Oil on canvas, 39-3/8 x 35-7/16 in., Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York, © 2008 Marlene Dumas.

Marlene Dumas, The Painter, 1994, oil on canvas, 79 x 39-1/4 in., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, fractional and promised gift of Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, © 2008 Marlene Dumas.

Marlene Dumas, The Woman of Algiers, 2001, Oil on canvas, 78-3/4 x 39-3/8 in., The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, partial and promised gift of Blake Byrne, © 2008 Marlene Dumas.

Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles
MOCA Grand Avenue
250 South Grand Avenue
213-621-1749
Los Angeles
Marlene Dumas:
Measuring
Your Own Grave
June 22-
September 22, 2008

Born in 1953 in Cape Town, South Africa, Dumas studied art at Michaelis School of Fine Arts at University of Cape Town and moved to Amsterdam in 1976 to pursue further studies at de Ateliers. Dumas has lived and worked in Amsterdam ever since. The exhibition surveys more than 30 years of work and is organized around the theme of portraiture. Drawing almost exclusively on photographic source material, Dumas explores questions of humanity and representation. Subjects of life, birth, sex, death, grief, and identity are represented in portraits and images drawn from an ongoing archive of Polaroid photographs, personal snapshots, and thousands of media images culled over time. A painting is never a literal rendition of a source, nor is the source of a painting the same as its psychological subject matter. Rather Dumas focuses on inherent differences between photography and painting — what she has described as “the essential immorality or indifference” of a photographic image when removed from its original context or stripped of its identifying information.

Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave features approximately 70 paintings and 35 drawings ranging in format from small individual drawings and intimate, early sketchbooks, to large-scale ink washes, which are, in some cases, more monumental than the paintings. Several series of drawings are also featured, including Models, which consists of more than 100 single sheets. Dumas’s paintings are also diverse in size and scale — ranging from very large, recumbent figures of the dead or newborn, to her newest painting, an intimate portrait of the Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe. The exhibition takes its subtitle, Measuring Your Own Grave, from a painting made in 2003. In this work, a figure bows toward the viewer, gracefully stretching its arms the width of the canvas. For the artist, this measuring is akin to the process of representation itself. Dumas believes that the process of making art is a struggle to be free of the prescriptions of the culture one comes from, just as the figures in her paintings measure themselves against the edges of the frame.

“The ambiguity often found in Dumas’s portraits allows the audience to deduce their own meaning from each work, and the comprehensiveness of this exhibition provides the opportunity for the viewer to trace her themes over time,” comments MOCA Assistant Curator Rebecca Morse. “The ambiguity of representation in her paintings and drawings is ultimately a political act, enticing the viewer into an awareness of his or her role in the assignation of meaning to faces, bodies, groups, and figures.”

Installed thematically and with a focus on Dumas’s ongoing investigation of portraiture, the exhibition reflects the artist’s tendency to work in series, with groups of paintings arranged together to create new associations. Key paintings in the exhibition include The White Disease (1985), which addresses issues of race by creating a visual relationship between the surface of skin and the surface of painting. In addition to works with single figures, Dumas also produces large-scale group portraits such as The Teacher (sub a) (1987).

Dumas’s portrayal of the female figure, often nude or provocatively clothed, contrasts with the art historical representation of women. In iconic works such as Waiting (For Meaning) and Losing (Her Meaning) (both 1988), the artist questions the power of this classic image — the female nude — to convey meaning. Other works, such as Miss Pompadour (1999) and Cracking the Whip (2000), show women in provocative poses, both humorous and assaulting in their acrobatic sexuality, while Male Beauty (2002) features an erotic image of a male nude. Connected to her exploration of female identity, Dumas’s work often includes portraits of infants and children, focusing on pregnancy and motherhood and the physical and psychological trauma and mystery of both. Works like Die Baba (1985) challenge the traditional portrayal of children as cute and innocent by suggesting their mysterious and even threatening aspects. Notions of beauty and ugliness underlie Models (1994), a group of 100 related drawings in serial format.

Examples from Dumas’s most recent body of work, the Man Kind series, highlight the artist’s ongoing commitment to questioning received ideas about identity and politics by presenting portraits of men, seemingly of Middle Eastern descent, drawn from images of terrorists, martyrs, Dutch Moroccans, Palestinians, friends, actors, and ordinary citizens. In Duct Tape (2002-05), the subject’s face is obscured by a hood, recalling recent photographs of Abu Ghraib or images of Palestinian prisoners. These paintings force a recognition by the viewer of the complexity of current political conflicts and our evolving understanding of race, identity, and human confrontation.

As curator Connie Butler writes in the accompanying catalogue, “Dumas’s career-long investigation of the portrait cannot be understood outside her relationship to issues of identity … Dumas has said that South Africa gave her content and Europe gave her form and, indeed, her relationship to her subjects is deeply imprinted by her experiences of constituency, citizenship, and viewership, as well as how these subjectivities shift as we inhabit different cultural positions.”

Marlene Dumas has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, at institutions including Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C; Tate Gallery, London; and Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt. The artist had recent survey exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; and Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg.

Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave is organized by Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in association with Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition is curated by Connie Butler, MOCA Ahmanson Curatorial Fellow and Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings at MoMA. MOCA’s presentation of the exhibition is organized by MOCA Assistant Curator Rebecca Morse. Following its initial presentation at MOCA, the exhibition travels to MoMA where it is on view December 14, 2008-February 16, 2009. The exhibition then travels to Menil Collection, Houston, where it is on view March 26-June 21, 2009.

Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave is accompanied by a 280-page, fully illustrated book, which serves as the exhibition catalogue. Co-published by Distributed Art Publishers (D.A.P.) and MOCA, the publication constitutes a comprehensive and scholarly examination of the artist’s career, featuring newly commissioned texts by exhibition curator Connie Butler, MOCA Director of Publications Lisa Gabrielle Mark, art historian Richard Shiff, and artist Matthew Monahan, as well as new writings by the artist. Butler takes a broad view of Dumas’s practice as artist-witness, examining the relationship of her paintings to real personal and socio-political events and reflecting on her reception in America vis-à-vis 1990s identity politics, while Shiff considers Dumas’s transformative process of painting from photographic sources through the notion of touch, considering the act of representation from a moral and ethical standpoint. Mark looks specifically at Dumas’s images of pregnant women and children to contemplate the interplay of empathy and ambivalence in her work, and Monahan offers a personal reflection on his relationship with Dumas, as both a fellow artist and a one-time denizen of Amsterdam. The catalogue includes an extensive exhibition history and bibliography.

Marlene Dumas. (South African, born 1953), Jen, 2005, Oil on canvas, 43-3/8 x 51-1/4", MoMA, Fractional and promised gift of Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis, © 2008 Marlene Dumas.