Mariska van den Berg

Marlene Dumas is an artist for whom the written word has always been paramount, a preoccupation revealed in her use of text and language in her paintings, and in the huge volume of writings she has produced and published since the very beginning of her career. Her texts echo the concerns of her paintings, interrogating questions of interpretation and meaning, sexuality, love and death. The artist has a unique voice, writing philosophically but playfully on art, painting, and language itself. She quotes from pop culture, art history, philosophy and literature with a light touch, referencing Dolly Parton and Picasso in the same breath. This revised and expanded edition of Sweet Nothings (first published in 1997) brings the selection of texts up to date (drawing on Dumas' writings for catalogues, magazines, journals). It also includes a new collection of Dumas' writing on artists, including personal responses to van Gogh, Frank Stella and Alice Neel. A detailed and comprehensive Annotations and Sources section makes the book a valuable reference tool for Dumas scholarship.… (mais)