I took my time in Palazzo Grassi, Venice one Sunday afternoon and discovered the magical portraits of Marlene Dumas. Many of them are ugly, distorted — far from glamour and beauty but they are so raw, so real — authentic portrayals of life.
It has taken me a long time to put this experience into words. Sometimes I just tend to wait and see whether, after enough time has passed, an idea continues to enchant me. It turns out that Marlene Dumas’ work remains something that I constantly think about. I spent a whole week talking to everyone about her — about what she does as an artist.
Now the one portrait that has since been stuck in my mind is that of Marilyn Monroe. Titled Dead Marilyn, it was painted in 2008. It is a very small painting. When one thinks of the portraits of Marilyn Monroe, one thinks of those by Andy Warhol. Glamourous, colourful, big, shiny and enchanting in every way possible. Dumas’ version is nothing like that.
Inspired by an autopsy photograph of the dead Marilyn Monroe, it is almost unidentifiable. The image comes from an old piece of newspaper that fell out of one of the boxes where she kept her things. She was looking for something else at the time. But somehow this image from an old newspaper occurred to her.
