IS ANYBODY REALLY THERE?

Marlene Dumas’ summer show at David Zwirner gives great pleasure. These are paintings, scenes that would be impossible to execute, and even imagine, in any other medium. Although some are rendered in oil, some in acrylic and some in ink wash, all have the lyrical rush of watercolors, with loose brushstroke and color that seeps into the field. Dumas paints commandingly. Different pieces, at different moments, recall Edvard Munch, Francis Bacon and Francesco Clemente. They vary in quality. Some are inescapable, monumental; others feel like sketches completed on deadline for the show’s opening.

Most of the paintings are portraits. About a dozen are full-size canvases showing figures head-to-toe, and dozens more are on small sheets of paper showing faces and other body parts. Many of them feel as if they capture a real person. There are flashes of particularity and eccentricity in individual faces (a gasp, a sneer, an awkward smile) and figures (arms crossed, lips parted, legs akimbo). And yet the softened brushwork lends them all a fleeting immateriality. Dumas seems to render her subjects after observation but gets at something else. These people feel bodiless, weightless, effectless, like figments from personal memory or poorly-remembered dreams. Like the paintings themselves, it’s the spiritual rather than the physical in them that allures.

Marlene Dumas, Omega’s eyes, 2018, Oil on canvas, 23 5/8 x 19 ¾ inches (60 x 50 cm). Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner Gallery.

August 12, 2018 by Nalina Moses

Whether or not it’s the greatest rock and roll photograph ever taken, Bob Gruen’s famous 1973 portrait of Led Zeppelin in front of their plane is pretty great. It’s richly composed, with the lilting horizontals of the fuselage and wings in the background, the Cyclops-eye of the engine in the foreground, the four band members in the middle, and the mirrored clippings of the band’s logo at the top and their legs below. The scene gets so many 70’s rock cliches right: the private plane, the shaggy hair, the open shirts, the super-tight flares. While the goings-on inside the plane, an old United Airlines Boeing 720 fitted out with sectional furniture and rechristened the Starship, were not innocent, this photograph is. It’s lovely.

A large part of the loveliness is Robert Plant. Cover him up and what we have are three sour-faced lads huddled under a plane. Led Zeppelin did a massive amount of posturing, both musically and theatrically, but Plant’s gesture here (hair tossed, hips cocked, arms outstretched) feels genuine. With his left hand he tames the plane like a circus elephant, and with his right hand, raised behind him, he reaches for the sky. The thick gold chain over his bare chest is macho, but softened by his repose. There’s nothing apologetic and nothing ironic about his position. He’s a rock star, and happy to be one.

Led Zeppelin, 1973. Photograph by Bob Gruen.

August 30, 2013 by Nalina Moses