A Place Called Space: Marlene Dumas - Cycladic Blues, Part 1

Wednesday, 10 September 2025

Marlene Dumas - Cycladic Blues, Part 1

'When we look at the work of Marlene Dumas we see bodies. Lots of bodies. Young bodies and old bodies. Dead bodies and alive bodies. Stylised bodies and naturalistically rendered bodies. Defiant bodies and compliant bodies'.

Marlene Dumas - Cycladic Blues, at the Museum of Cycladic Art.

Dumas was born in South Africa during the years of Apartheid but has lived and worked in Amsterdam for nearly five decades. The artist has spent her career using painting to explore all human states of being ranging from violence, mourning and melancholy to joy and tenderness. She's done this over and over by taking the human body as her subject.

This exhibitionn brings together a diverse range of over 40 of the artist's works spanning the past three decades. Whether it's in ink, crayon and pencil drawings on paper or some of her more monumentally scaled vertical canvases, these are testaments to the whole of human experience - life and death, love and hate, rememberance and forgetfulness. Dumas has suggested that 'painting is about the trace of the human touch'.

Dumas' paintings explore sexuality, love, death, motherhood, intimate relationships and political issues, often referencing art history, popular culture and current affairs. She describes her approach as one in which 'second-hand images generate first-hand emotions'. She infuses her source materials with personal feelings from her own lived experience.

She examines the complexities of identity and the nature of human existence, highlighting the unexpected coexistence of violence and innocence. Usually politically charged, her work addresses social injustices, challenging us to consider the often elusive truth. She works without a predetermined plan, relying on her intuition resulting in works full of ambiguity.

I love Dumas' work and experiencing her work alongside ancient objects from the Cycladic civilisation - a prehistoric culture that existed between 3000 and 1000 BC, about which we know little - was very touching. I love the female figurines of that civilisation, some of which are depicted with their belly pronounced, perhaps indicating pregnancy, and which are so mysterious and so minimalist.

Female statue, 2700-2300 BC (marble)

Cycladic Blues, 2020, (oil on canvas)

This painting is the only work whose source material is directly related to the heads of the Cycladic marble figurines, whose faces are blank and show no emotion. 'By working very fast in the diluted wet paint, I deliberately touched the canvas very lightly to make a suggestion of eyes and a mouth, allowing for an expression to emerge that seems to be mourning the fact that we all have to die. So many different interpretations of these sculptures exist, but it does seem that they were regularly used in funerary practice, as they have been found mostly in graves'.

Skull (as a house), 2007, (oil on canvas)

Mask, 2020, (oil on canvas)

Torso and thighs of a female figurine, 4500-3200BC, (marble)

Phantom Age, 2025, (oil on canvas)

Phantom Age and Old (below) 'have the same source, an image of a Roman copy of a Hellenistic sculpture of the 2nd century BC called the Old Market Woman. The same woman photographed from two different angles. Both of these large paintings show exaggerated proportions. Phantom Age is quite stylized, and it is difficult to comprehend that her distinct shape was made by pouring the paint mixture onto the canvas and by me controlling the flow by moving the canvas. Her face was not touched by a brush.

To my joy, I was told that this ancient lady, my muse for the night, was not being respectfully old and wise, but was apparently an aged courtesan on her way to the festival of Dionysus, the god of wine!'

Old, 2025, (oil on canvas)

'The face of this painting did not flow organically from her body but was made separately after several failed attempts at finding a fitting expression. Being old can make one feel bad and sad.'

Female figurine, known as the 'Mantle Dancer', 350-300 BC, (clay)

Candle, 2020, (oil on canvas)

Glass Tears (for Man Ray), 2008, (oil on canvas)

We moved out of that first exhibition room and before going up the stairs to the upstairs exhibition spaces

we stopped at the round room on the ground floor to look at a video screening of Marlene Dumas talking about her work

Unfinished figurine, 2700-2400/2300 BC, (marble)

50+, 2010-2018, (oil on canvas)

Dumas has said that the paintings of older women could be called 'self-portraits. 50+ was painted and repainted over time, inspired by a postcard of a close-up of a Roman marble copy of a Hellenistic sculpture of a drunken old woman with a wine jug in her hand. Some historians even link her to depictions of satyrs, in terms of posture, who pays tribute to Dionysus through her intoxication'.

Alfa, 2004, (oil on canvas)

Persona, 2020, (oil on canvas)

This painting was inspired by one of the plaster copies of a mask-like head.

Helena, 1992, (oil on canvas)

'My daughter Helena (Helen of Troy was described in Greek mythology as the most beautiful woman in the world) features in many of my works'.

Helena Michel, 2020, (oil on canvas)

Statuette of Aphrodite, 2nd-1st BC, (marble)

Leather Boots, 2000, (oil on canvas)

High Heeled Shoes, 2000, (oil on canvas)

Bottle, 2020, (oil on canvas)

Donkey (daytime), 2021, (oil on canvas)

Composite vessel, 1900-1650 BC, (clay)

Two Gods, 2021, (oil on canvas)

Dumas on Two Gods: This painting 'happened unexpectedly. The painting started in a playful manner, giving chance a bigger role. The paint was poured onto the canvas in two large gestures without a preconceived idea. Eventually, they became these beautiful monumental male sexual organs. Unfortunately, one cannot help but think of the ugly, egocentric political state of the world, as some male world leaders yet again think they are God's gift to the world, or rather, gods themselves. I will deny them the pleasure of naming them'.