press release - Zeno X Gallery

Marlene Dumas
For Whom the Bell Tolls
September 6th – October 11th 2008
Wednesday – Saturday 14 – 18h or on appointment
Zeno X Gallery – Leopold De Waelplaats 16 – 2000 Antwerpen
Zeno X Storage – Appelstraat 37 – 2140 Borgerhout
+32 3 216 16 26 – info@zeno-x.com - www.zeno-x.com
For Whom the Bell Tolls, 2008
In 2006, 2007 and 2008 Dumas’ work was shown in retrospectives in three different continents.
Museums in Japan, South-Africa and the United States honoured the most famous female
artist. Dumas cooperated intensively in writing different texts for the catalogue each one of the
museums published. It was a period of reflection, not so much of painting.
On September 12th 2007 Dumas’ mother died. She was one of the most important persons in
the artist’s life. As a tribute she painted Einder, named after a collection of poems written by the
South-African/Dutch poet Elizabeth Eybers, who died in December 2007.
For her exhibition in Los Angeles Dumas painted Dead Marilyn, an autopsy portrait of the star
who craved to be an actress. Also in the current exhibition For Whom the Bell Tolls Marilyn
Monroe reappears several times. For instance in Inverted Marilyn, Blue Marilyn and Blue
Movie.
Other moviestars in the exhibition are Romy
Schneider (Sad Romy), Ingrid Bergman (For
Whom the Bell Tolls), Emanuella Riva
(Hiroshima mon amour) and Renee Falconetti
(Sleeping with the Enemy). Margaux Hemingway
(granddaughter of Ernst Hemingway), who posed
in 1990 for the Playboy magazine returns as pars
pro toto in Magnetic Fields.
Dumas used these tragic figures side by side
with mythological heroines, such as IO, the
Greek goddess who fell in love with Jupiter,
Magnetic Fields, 2008
appearing to her as a cloud. “Io” is also the name
given to the moon closest to the planet Jupiter, a planet with magnetic fields and volcanic
activity.
The painting In God We Trust can be read as a reminiscence of the old Greek ritual to lay coins
on the eyes and tongue of the deceased. The coins were used as toll for the ferryman who
brought the death safely over the Styx into the world of death. “In God We Trust” is also carved
on the side of American coins.
Although she isn’t a real surrealist, Dumas beliefs in the power of accidental but necessary
encounters. Searching for crying women in the 20th century visual arts, she discovered the
elegant eyes of Man Ray’s Kiki. These Glass Tears served for the artist as thé example of the
modernistic representation of tears. Likewise the portrait of Dora
Maar became a necessity for this exhibition. Dora Maar is the
woman who modelled for Picasso’s Weeping Women, one of the
most moving series of crying women in late modern painting.
She was the one who told she saw Picasso crying in his studio.
When she asked him why he cried, he answered: “Life is too
terrible”.
At first side this exhibition may seem somehow incoherent, but
this is exactly how most of Dumas’ paintings are structured. Like
great grief makes the face grimace, the way of bringing paint
onto the canvas changes within one painting from smooth,
almost fotorealistic to capricious puddles. The faces appear to
be incoherent compositions of different moments consisting of
contradictic emotions. Mourning, anger, shock, despair and
resignation are shown.
Dora Maar, 2008
The title of this exhibition was chosen after Hemingway’s book about the Spanish civil war. The
author borrowed it himself from the poet John Donne (1573-1631) who wrote: “Any man’s
death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for
whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”
Exhibitions in Japan, South-Africa and the United States
Essential Painting, National Museum of Art, Osaka, 2006.
Intimate relations, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, 2007.
Measuring Your Own Grave, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2008.
Measuring Your Own Grave, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2008.
Measuring Your Own Grave, The Menil Collection, Houston, 2008.