Known for her profound representations of feminism and other social issues such as race, sexuality, violence and beauty, Marlene Dumas has broken barriers of every kind using her thought-provoking and insightful art.
Known for her profound representations of feminism and other social issues such as race, sexuality, violence and beauty, Marlene Dumas has broken barriers of every kind using her thought-provoking and insightful art.
“I didn’t know I would be able to live off my art,” Dumas admitted. Until 2006, Dumas held the record for the highest bid made for an artwork created by a woman.
She was paid $3.34 million for her painting The Teacher; her status elevated appreciably and she became the world’s most sought after living female artist.
Dumas was honoured by Rhodes University recently at graduation by awarding her with an Honorary Doctorate for her significant contribution to the art industry.
The Honorary Doctorate will be an addition to several other awards and merits she has received throughout her colourful career.
As she is based in Amsterdam, she felt the need to use her art to help develop art in her native South Africa by establishing the Iziko National Gallery.
“Since I’m not in South Africa most of the time, I thought I should I give back in some way,” she explained. The gallery supports and promotes young South African artists and is based in Cape Town where Dumas was born in 1953.
After she obtained her BA in Visual Arts from the University of Cape Town (UC T), she attended the prestigious de Atelier institute in Amsterdam in 1976.
She whispers jokingly, “I was so disappointed and unhappy in my first year. UC T was much better!” Dumas remained disillusioned and struggled to adjust to Dutch culture, until she realised that she had to make her stay in Europe worth its while.
Marvelling at the unpredictable nature of life, she laughs, “I was never supposed to live there!” This change of heart was the combined result of a hard-wearing positive attitude and an awareness that she still had a lot to gain from Amsterdam.
She remembers writing long, detailed letters to her mother complaining bitterly about the weather, something she never took notice of before.
Dumas’s moods and feelings invariably change the outcome of her art and she acknowledges the therapeutic nature of art.
She pensively elaborates, “Sometimes painting my fears helps me turn them from something negative to something more positive.”
Her reputation for constantly evolving the themes in her work has generated some misinterpretations by critics, which yields some unfavourable results.
She therefore prefers to write for her art herself as she gets to be the voice of her own painting. Dumas continues to show us that art is rich with different possibilities.
Her extensive use of film stills and newspaper images had contributed significantly to the aesthetic value of her work and she continues to create new dimensions in the global art world and break more world records.
