Marlene Dumas

Jack Tilton Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1996

This work is in excellent condition overall. The sheet is hinged verso to the backing board along the top edge of the sheet. There are artist's pinholes in the top two corners of the sheet. The top and bottom edges are lightly deckled and there is evidence of a soft undulation throughout the sheet. Framed under Plexiglas.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Glory be to God for dappled things—
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
       For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
       And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                     Praise Him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Pied Beauty," 1877

Emerging from Marlene Dumas’ seminal body of Magdalena paintings first exhibited in Venice in 1995, the present work is a bold testament to the sensual drama and alluring mystery that characterizes Dumas’ revered painterly aesthetic. The figure in the present work is an inspired combination of the English supermodel Naomi Campbell and the biblical character Mary Magdalene, both of whom represent Dumas’ core interests in gender, sexuality, and desire. By synthesizing these two icons of feminine ideals, Dumas’ aim is to explore the emotive weight of culturally-loaded images of sexuality. Elaborating on her subject matter, Dumas says, "I believe in love stories, the gender of the lover does not matter in the end. I use religious subjects as I use fairy-tale figures, in order to give my audience an easy starting point, a popular reverence that relates to all times and that is familiar to most people" (the artist in Catherine Kinley, Exh. Cat., London, Tate Gallery, Marlene Dumas, 1996).

In Rejected Magdalena, we see a young woman who stares out from beneath a ghostly white stained guise. Long tresses of hair fall over her breasts and extend to her thighs, where she folds her hands in an act of modesty. Though she covers herself, her resolute and penetrating gaze seems to declare she is unbothered by her nudity. Dumas’ sensuous passages of ink wash across the woman’s flesh, contrasting with the saturated strokes of paint that cascade vertically down the girl’s torso in undulating locks of hair. Though her dark body is alluring in its velvety texture, her blanched face is peculiarly speckled and blemished. Herein lies the unrelenting ambiguity of Dumas’ painterly style—the identity of the figure is perpetually complicated through conflicting tensions of beauty and imperfection, intimacy and distance, empowerment and vulnerability, and shame and redemption.