Marlene Dumas: the Image as Burden

Interesting exhibition at Tate Modern looking at the work of Marlene Dumas which I’d describe as expressionist portraits.

I admit at first look I wasn’t too convinced by these pictures as they looked quite slap dash but on closer looking the draftsmanship was much more refined. I liked the fact that the room introductions were quotes by the artist which gave insight into her working methods. 

I didn’t really connect to them emotionally. I liked the “Black Drawings” sequence which was a series of heard studies with different degrees of finish and abstraction. I also liked the picture of the artist’s daughter “The Painter” which is at first a rather menacing image of a child with what look like bloodied hands however on reading the commentary she had been painting in the garden!

A lot of the work was based on found images from photographs and magazines and this technique reminded me of Sickert!

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