12 February 2015, The Tablet

Partial exposure


 
The artist Marlene Dumas probes her images for their meanings of life and death We tend to think of Pop Art as a celebration of popular culture, but it had its darker side: alongside his Campbell’s Soup Cans and Brillo boxes, Andy Warhol also made screen prints of electric chairs and car crashes. His Marilyn Monroe series, created after the film star’s death, come somewhere in between.Born in 1953, Marlene Dumas belongs to a later generation, but she owes much to the dark side of Pop Art. Her painting Dead Marilyn (2008) – based on an autopsy photograph – does not feature in Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden (until 10 May), the first British retrospective of her work at Tate Modern, but the show does include several images of dead women. There is the young Palest
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