Friday, March 09, 2007

Two African portraits

found on Artthribe:


Mustafa Maluka, I've decided my fate (2007, oil and acrylic on canvas)

Marlene Dumas, Portrait of Kendell Geers (2004, watercolour)

Is it just me, or is the skin a haunting issue? This transparency, this impossibility of getting there, of touching, of having it as a given. This need for nuance, and nuance, and indefinition, redefinition, something other than definition. The color. The need of color. And the need, especially in the case of Maluka (which, by the way, in colloquial Portuguese means 'crazy'), to give skin a depth that surprizes in the flat world around it... And the calm, but not happy, look.
What is color? What is left of color? Isn't it impressive it can still cream, after all this history, after all this art?

2 comments:

harlequinpan said...

I love these!

vvoi said...

My poor ignorant self trusted a misinformed review of Maluka's work and put a footnote saying that his portrait represents Paris Hilton. As Maluka himself pointed out on his blog, it is nothing of the sort. If you go here, you can see the artist at work, with the original photo. Sorry.

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