Marlene Dumas Quotes

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

  Marlene Dumas

  Shows, Ifs

  36 Copy quote

• 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

  Time, Art, Light

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• 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

  Pain, Mean, Pleasure

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• 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

  Falling In Love, Art, Pain

  Marlene Dumas, Gianni Romano, Angela Vettese (2003). “Marlene Dumas: suspect”, Skira - Berenice

  24 Copy quote

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

  Marlene Dumas

  Confusion, Erotic, Information

  27 Copy quote

• 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

  Inspiring, Art, Reality

  23 Copy quote

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

  Marlene Dumas

  Suffering, Heavy

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• 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

  Art, Erotic, Moments

  Marlene Dumas, Emma Bedford, Standard Bank Centre Art Gallery (2007). “Marlene Dumas: Intimate Relations”, p.42, Jacana Media

  13 Copy quote

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

  Marlene Dumas

  Thinking, Pretty Things

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• 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

  Ideas, Doubt, Guilt

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

  Marlene Dumas

  Happens

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

  Marlene Dumas

  Sick, Shows, So Sick

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• 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

  Drawing, Forever, Paper

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• I moved to Holland because I wanted to see American art.

  Marlene Dumas

  Art, Holland, Wanted

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• 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

  Class, Crowds, Scandal

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• 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

  Drawing, Giving, Auctions

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• 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

  Swim, Too Late, Late

  7 Copy quote

• I think I am probably a lot like my father.

  Marlene Dumas

  Father, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

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