Tate © Marlene Dumas
Marlene Dumas is known for her reinterpretation of found images, and has stated that she employs 'second-hand images and first-hand emotions'. Stern and Lucy are both based on the death image of an historical woman: the first, the German Red Army Faction terrorist Ulrike Meinhof; the second, the martyred saint in Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio's The Burial of St Lucy 1608. Dumas decontextualises both portraits, showing them in extreme close-up and translating them into ambiguous, unsettling images which suggest both ecstatic sexual charge and the taut pallor of death. In doing so, the artist explores the desire to visually consume, provocatively confronting the viewer and creating the potential for multiple readings of her works.
Daniel Buren
Pablo Picasso
Fred Williams
Marlene Dumas
Marlene Dumas
Carsten Höller
Gabriel Orozco
Stan Douglas
Jeff Wall