Marlene Dumas (B. 1953)
Provenienza : Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam.Acquired from the above by the present owner.
Exhibited : Paris, Musée national d'Art moderne, Centre George Pompidou, Marlene Dumas, Nom de Personne/Name No Names, October-December 2001, no. 49 (illustrated in colour, p. 82). This exhibition later travelled to New York, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, February-June 2002 and Tilburg, De Pont Stichting voor Hedendaagse Kunst, June-September 2002.
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Note : THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTORNo VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.Executed in dark-coloured tones, the present work is an intense and enigmatic double-portrait by Marlene Dumas representing two close-up figures pressed against each other cheek to cheek. Forming a sensual whole, the two faces appear to lovingly merge. The diluted watercolour, a favourite medium of the artist, seems to be completed in a single continuous flow of the brush, reinforcing the impression of wholeness, as if the two faces were a single sensually melting cell. Bodiless and groundless within the context of this image, these washed-out floating faces have no background, and therefore no identity. The saturated ink-wash creates mere outlines of a faces features. The medium bleeds into the paper, highlighting the fusion of the two faces, bestowing intensity and emotion to the work. Filling the entire frame of the paper, the two visages - with their indeterminate genders and yet similar features - shape an image which is erotic and yet also disquieting.Such unbarbed tenderness in Dumas work would be surprising, and indeed, by playing with words as well as images, she deftly disrupts this picture. One word, the title Judas, is all it takes to actually turn what appears to be a couple kissing lovingly into a much stronger, darker image. The artist, who at first seems to eliminate all context by depriving the characters of any surroundings or pictorial reference points, actually sets the context with a single word. The name Judas evokes the betrayal of Jesus Christ: this has become the kiss given by Judas to Jesus prior to his arrest. Educated in the Dutch Reformed Church, religion is a prominent theme for the artist and the same year she painted Judas, she completed a collection of twenty-one portraits of Jesus, titled Jesus Serene. If in the beginning was the word, then in Judas, this very word undeniably dramatizes the scene. The word betrays the spectator's initial impression. The loving scene becomes the incarnation of treason. The idea of betrayal added to the dark tones used in the work can also be read as a reference to the fate of the black population during her upbringing in Apartheid-era South Africa, introducing another theme central to Dumas work. The title is not here to lock down the significance of the work but rather to open a reflection on the relation between word and image - and their ability to betray the viewer and to betray each other. As the artist explains, "one can and must, at times, put words in the mouth of the work and/or take them away again. Our eyes are close to our ears" (M. Dumas quoted in Marlene Dumas, Suspect, Milan 2003, p. 17).
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