Marlene Dumas

Bern, Kunsthalle Bern, Marlene Dumas, the question of human pink, July - August 1989, p. 44, illustrated in color
Eindhoven, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum; Philadelphia, Institute of Contemporary Art, Marlene Dumas: Miss Interpreted, March - May 1993 and November 1993 - January 1994, p. 44, illustrated in color (in installation at Bern, 1989)

Fishbowl Country is an arresting image of a man lying down with his head turned towards the viewer, gazing out of the picture plane in an almost seductive fashion with his dazzling turquoise eyes. His confrontational gaze is interrupted by the appearance of a small, loosely described fishbowl, blocking both his and the viewer’s gaze, so that the actual overall effect is somewhat murky. Typically for Dumas, the erotic charge of this male gaze is here colored so as to seem like a deathly putrefaction has just set in. The present work can be compared to another, very similar depiction of the male: The Particularly of Nakedness, also from 1987 and now in the Stedelijk van Abbesmuseum in Eindhoven. At the time, this work, echoing Hans Holbein’s The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521, Basel, Kunstmuseum) was only the second male nude Dumas had made. Although physiognomically similar, these two figures remain detached from one another in the sense that all of Dumas’ figures must be seen as unique images; they engender no sense of ‘personality’, being rather an agglomeration of various images the artist has found in magazines or photographs she has taken. The present ‘sitter’ is thus, Frankenstein-like, created from various physiognomic parts that fascinated the artist.