Marlene Dumas Quotes

#1. I moved to Holland because I wanted to see American art.

Marlene Dumas

#2. No painting can exist without the tension of what it figures and what it concretely consists of. The pleasure of what it could mean and the pain of what it's not.

Marlene Dumas

#3. There are these painterly things that happen while I'm working.

Marlene Dumas

#4. I do think that I'm not good at making pretty things. It doesn't come so naturally for me.

Marlene Dumas

#5. There is no beauty, if it doesn't show some of the terribleness of life.

Marlene Dumas

#6. I am against: general ideas / the nude / the appropriation of images / the mystification of the untitled / the glorification of artistic doubt / the fuzzy edges of sensitivity / old sins / and useless guilt.

Marlene Dumas

#7. When Black and White are colors and not races, people will still fall in love and discriminate between partners and feel sad and bad and need art that breaks your heart and takes you to those places where pain becomes beauty.

Marlene Dumas

#8. I never learned to ride a bicycle, and it is too late now. I never learned to drive. I never learned to swim.

Marlene Dumas

#9. At the moment my art is situated between the pornographic tendency to reveal everything and the erotic inclination to hide what it's all about.

Marlene Dumas

#10. I have always been interested in how you can depict suffering without being heavy-handed.

Marlene Dumas

#11. I'm always so sick of myself after a show.

Marlene Dumas

#12. The demi-monde does not represent the crowd of courtesans, but the class of declassed women It is divided from that of honest women by public scandal, and divided from that of the courtesans by money.

Marlene Dumas

#13. My best works are erotic displays of mental confusions.. with intrusions of irrelevant information.

Marlene Dumas

#14. I think I am probably a lot like my father.

Marlene Dumas

#15. The best works do not necessarily get to auction. I like to draw, so maybe I give you a little drawing. And then eventually it ends up at auction. And then critics say, 'Oh, that's a bad drawing!' Well, I didn't say it was so wonderful.

Marlene Dumas

#16. Drawings are only a few lines on paper. Therefore it's easy to carry around in plastic bags. Drawings are cheaper than paintings. They don't pretend they'll last forever.

Marlene Dumas

#17. What a funny thing painting is. The abstract painters always insist on their connection with the visible reality, while the so called figurative artists insist that what they really care about, is the abstract qualities of life.

Marlene Dumas

#18. I don't go to a psychiatrist. I don't go to a gym. I run away from my accountant, I run away from my dentist. They are all supposed to help you, but I like to stay in bed, where I have a chance to reflect, like Rossellini.

Marlene Dumas

#19. Painting doesn't freeze time. It circulates and recycles time like a wheel that turns. Those who were first might well be last. Painting is a very slow art. It doesn't travel with the speed of light. That's why dead painters shine so bright.

Marlene Dumas