Marlene Dumas has become the first contemporary woman artist to join the Louvre’s permanent collection after nine new works by the South African-born artist were unveiled at the Paris museum last Thursday.
The site-specific paintings are now on permanent display in the Porte des Lions atrium at the entrance of the Galerie des Cinq Continents (Gallery of the Five Continents) and the Paintings galleries.
Entitled Liaisons, the series of works depict faces which, according to the artist, draw on the “horrors” of the world today. A statement from the Louvre says that some faces are “more abstract, others more gestural, and some reflect the traces of drawings”.
In an interview with Donatien Grau, the Louvre’s head of contemporary programmes, Dumas says: “My faces are a mixture of the past and the present. I cannot paint the horrors of the ongoing genocides of our times directly, but their shadows did affect the mood under which these faces were made.
Portraiture deals with likeness and the recognition of people known. Faces deal with the nameless. They include those dehumanised, like fugitives, branded as aliens.”
Laurence des Cars, the Louvre’s director, says in a statement that Dumas was the “obvious choice” for the commission. “She defends and illustrates the medium of painting like few others, and her work is conceived as a space for bringing together different sensibilities and origins. That is exactly what we aimed for to do with this redesigned space,” she says.
Asked how she believes visitors will react to her work, Dumas says: “I cannot predict the average reactions of viewers, as each carries their own personal burdens and baggage of experience with them. And for me, this is also not familiar ground, to make paintings this large and hang them this high. Intimacy fits me better.”
She adds: “I do think some will say about me, ‘Why her, and why here?!’ And I will answer, ‘Because she asked me.’ You do not wish to say no when Laurence des Cars asks you [to make works],” says Dumas.
The artist also outlines the works at the Paris museum which have influenced her practice, such as Michelangelo’s famous Dying Slave sculpture (1513-16). “The Louvre represents for me not only the art history of the so-called West, with its beauties and its inhumanities, but also the value of preserving and sharing humanity’s collective history and interrelations,” she says.
The Dumas project forms part of the Louvre’s expanding contemporary art programme. Last year the Belgian artist Luc Tuymans presented a temporary installation entitled The Orphan in an octagonal gallery joining up the Sully and Richelieu wings. Last month the Louvre acquired its first video work, a piece by the Algeria-born artist Mohamed Bourouissa.