HAPPY PORTRAIT MONDAY

Supermodel, 1995

Marlene Dumas

Famous for her serial portraits, Amsterdam-based Marlene Dumas currently has a retrospective exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum. "The Image as Burden" is the first major solo exhibition that Dumas has had in the Netherlands in 20 years and consists of 200 drawings and paintings from the 1970's to present. Over decades Dumas has painted faces from photographs, newspapers, and magazines. By culling the original images from their inundative context, her work offers viewers a chance to re-read these mass distributed faces simply as portraits -blank and untethered from the socio-political world that catapulted their fame.