Myths & Mortals
Marlene Dumas at David Zwirner
The Dutch artist Marlene Dumas has been a constant presence in the art world since her rise to fame in the 1980s, and as time goes on, she seems to grow more and more ambitious as an artist. Her new exhibition at David Zwirner in New York is no exception. Called Myths & Mortals, this title has some heft, and so you may not be surprised that this is a show that is wide ranging in its meditations on sex, life, death, and history.
This show derives from two separate but complimentary inspirations. The first being the sixteenth-century Shakespeare poem Venus & Adonis, which was recently translated by Hafid Bouazza and illustrated by Dumas. These intimate works on paper are done in light, gauzy washes of ink, which is a contrast from the blunt tragedy of this poem’s narrative. We see moments of love and eroticism, and then those of sadness and violent death. The most successful aspect of these illustrations is the total continuity in how Dumas handles these subjects: pain and pleasure, life and death are given the same treatment.
The second body of work in this sprawling exhibition isn’t so much driven by a single story, but instead combines a number of recurring themes for the artist. Huge works (about ten feet tall) show nudes rendered in thin forms and lurid colors. There is something corpse-like and haunting about these paintings. The veiled yellow skin of a bride or the blue flesh of a pregnant woman may seem odd when depicting what are often seen as positive moments in a person’s life. Marriage and birth are events that traditionally evoke happiness and growth, but there is an element of risk, entrapment, and death, too. Destruction is always a possibility during an act of creation.
The smaller paintings of this show are another iteration of Dumas’s obsession with the human figure. We see faces in various states of pleasure, whether it be from sex, drugs, or alcohol. We also see cropped parts of the body, like a breast, a set of teeth, or an eye. The color is again startling in its effectiveness, with normal bodies suddenly vivid in blood red or toxic green.
As seen throughout this show (myth, mortal, and everything in between), these are drawings and paintings that seem to pull at the animalistic undercurrent in our human psyche and history. Due to this frankness, these are challenging and even ugly works. However, in that honesty, they are also masterful and sublime.
