View After Death (of Conditioned Aesthetics)
Marlene Dumas intrigues us with her gesture painting, Measuring Your Own Grave, luring us into her exhibition, of the same name, of portraits of pain and passion. Very much alive, she was robust and effusive in her thanks to MoMA for her mid-career survey, organized by curator Cornelia Butler.
The artist’s canvases, like Imaginary 2, 2002 are an exorcism of heinous real crimes and imaginings. Just in time for the holidays, a girl hangs like an ornament. We don’t see the face. She could be the innocence that suffers and dies within us every time a child is murdered from violence, starvation or neglect in Africa, America or anywhere.
In D-rection, a youth, not hung, contemplates his erection. To use as a weapon, give pleasure or both? Size matters, but don’t take that as criticism. A violent edge to sex turns reality inside out and the edges of the High Heeled Shoes bleed. In erotically charged works throughout, her female figures are honestly physical, their beauty is in the truth. Dumas applies the pain and pleasure of sexuality directly to the canvas, unfiltered.
Ethos, the universal, objective element in art and Pathos, the personal, emotional element in art merge in her work. To appreciate the beauty in raw reality, let go of conditioned aesthetics. That usually means that suffering has been transformed into a thing of surface beauty, which shields us from the pain. Dumas shows it all. We suffer through the embarrassment of public exposure of our fears and desires on the wall in front of us. A fast track to an open heart, mind and wound. Feel, think and heal!
Dumas and I were both born in 1953. We both went to Amsterdam in 1976, she from South Africa and me from the USA. Dumas stayed on in Holland and I came back to NYC, both to pursue our lives as artists and as women on the path of self-discovery. I have been on a roller-coaster ride in a parallel universe since discovering Marlene Dumas at MOMA. Jump on and accept the challenge of
Measuring Your own Grave.
Now at MoMA Through February 16, 09
11 West 53rd St, NYC, NY 10019
212 708-9431
www.moma.org