Marlene Dumas: Mourning Marsyas (2024)

I. 

 

Regular readers will recall that back in April of this year, I went along to the Horse Hospital to view the overtly political artwork of Gee Vaucher and hear what she had to say about her time working with Crass (an anarcho-hippie collective based at Dial House in Essex and masquerading as punks during the period 1977-1984): click here.  

And they might also recall that in September of this year, I visited the Richard Saltoun Gallery, in Mayfair, to view a solo exhibition by Penny Slinger; another British-born artist who likes to combine elements of surrealism with (feminist-informed sexual) politics and another woman now aged in her seventies (at 77, she's just two years younger than Vaucher): click here. 

 

Anyway, completing this trio of septuagenarian female artists is Marlene Dumas (71), whose solo exhibition of sixteen new(ish) works at the Frith Street Gallery - including the large (100 x 30 cm) canvas pictured here entitled Mourning Marsyas - I went to see earlier this week ... [1] 

 

II.

 

For those, like me, whose knowledge of ancient mythology is patchy at best (but who aren't fortunate enough to have the Little Greek on hand to fill in the gaps), Marsyas was the satyr who - skilled as he was on the double pipe (αὐλός) - mistakenly challenged Apollo to a contest to determine who was the best musician. 

 

All-too-predictably, the Muses found in favour of the latter, and Apollo, proving that the only thing worse than a bad loser is a vindictive winner, punished Marsyas by skinning him alive [2].  

 

There are, I suppose, numerous ways we might interpret this story. But Dumas - who was born and grew up in South Africa during apartheid - always likes to side with the victim, be that Christ hanging on his Cross or a dead member of the Red Army Faction.

 

Thus, for Dumas, Apollo is the villain and Marsyas symbolises not hubris, but the right of the individual to freely express themselves artistically. And so she mourns Marsyas and all others who have died in their attempt to challenge those wielding power and authority. 

 

I've seen it suggested that there's a certain tenderness in Dumas's canvas which is missing from the savage beauty of Titian's Flaying Marsyas painted 470 years earlier. And that might be the case: or it might be pity which is on display here, which is an altogether different thing (often confused with compassion) [3]. 

 

It's a shame that Iris Murdoch isn't around to consult on this question [4]. 

 

 

III. 

 

All in all, I like Dumas's paintings; created, according to the gallery press release, 'through a mixture of chance and intention [...] combining very fast and focused actions with reflective pauses'. 

 

What that means is that Dumas often pours paint directly onto the canvas and then goes from there, teasing out a central figure or a face. Sometimes these figures and faces appear in an instant, whilst at other times they require careful consideration [5].

 

Strangely, despite Dumas openly confessing that her works are "'heavy with the weight of a bad conscience, deceased lovers, past failures and present atrocities'" [6], I found the exhibition quite refreshing; perhaps Nietzsche was right after all and cruelty is indeed one of the oldest festive joys of mankind [7].       

 

Apart from the central work after which the exhibition took its name, there were several other works that caught my eye, including a phallic picture consisting of a pair of big black cocks and a smaller canvas commemorating the 69 people killed at a summer camp on the island of Utøya in July 2011 by the Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Breivik (what this tells us about her and/or me readers can decide).

 

 

Marlene Dumas: Two Gods (2021) Oil on canvas (150 x 140 cm) 

and Utøya (2018-2023) Oil on canvas (40 x 50 cm) 

Photos by Peter Cox courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London

   

 

Notes

 

[1] Marlene Dumas: Mourning Marsyas opened at the Frith Street Gallery (Golden Square) on 20 September and finishes on 16 November 2024. Full details can be found by clicking here. 

 

[2] For those readers keen to know further details, the story of Marsyas can be found in Book VI (lines 382-400) of Ovid's Metamorphoses: click here for a translation by A. S. Kline (2000) on poetryintranslation.com 

 

[3] Nietzsche famously viewed pity as a dangerous pathological condition that weakens the pitier and degrades the pitied. It is thus a form of practical nihilism disguised as a moral virtue. Compassion, on the other hand, is a feeling with the one who suffers; not a feeling for and is born of a true love for others as well as a love of fate. 

      Readers who wish to know more on this might like to see the essay by Suzanne Obdrzalek, 'On the Contrast between Pity and Compassion in Nietzsche', in Aporia, Vol. 7 ( BYU, 1997), pp. 59-72. It can be downloaded and read as a pdf by clicking here.

 

[4] The Irish-British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch was a huge fan of Titian's late masterpiece (painted c. 1570-76), once describing it as the greatest of all works of art in the Western tradition in that it manages to touch on life in all its ambiguity, horror, and misery whilst, at the same time, being a beautiful work that invests the human story with something divine. 

 

[5] It's not surprising to discover that Dumas often refers to the concept of pareidolia when discussing her work; i.e., the psychological phenomenon by which the brain is given to perceive meaningful images (such as faces) in random visual stimuli. I have written on this phenomenon in a post dated 4 June 2015: click here. 

 

[6] Dumas writing in an introductory essay to the Mourning Marsyas exhibition and cited by Adrian Searle in his interview with her in The Guardian (23 September 2023): click here. 

 

[7] See Nietzsche, Morgenröthe (1881), I. 18. Translated into English by R. J. Hollingdale as Daybreak (Cambridge University Press, 1982).  

 

Marlene Dumas

marlenedumas.nl 

frithstreetgallery.com

A Brief Note on the Psychology of Philosophy

I think, therefore I'm ill

 

I. 

 

After a recent 6/20 presentation [1], someone in the audience surprised me by saying that she didn't really wish to address the philosophical aspects of the subject (mourning), as whenever she started to think about such ideas they made her feel unwell. 

 

This raises a question that the London-based writer Sam Woolfe discussed in an interesting blog post a couple of years back: Can Philosophy Harm Your Mental Health? [2]

 

Obviously, the answer is yes - what would be the point of it otherwise? However, I'd like here to briefly pick up on Woolfe's work on the relationship between psychological traits (if they exist) and philosophical beliefs (if that isn't an oxymoron). 

 

 

II.  

 

Although I'm wary of turning philosophy into just another all too human discipline rooted in the personality and biography of the practitioner, I have to acknowledge that Nietzsche would often do this in an attempt to expose the prejudices of philosophers and demonstrate how rationality is a peculiar abberation that has grown out of unreason (i.e., the unconscious forces, flows, fears, and desires of the body) [3].  

 

However, to conclude that philosophy is simply the attempt to turn the universe into a home for man by ascribing moral logic to it via an exploration of one's own temperament - as the neo-Platonic philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch concludes - is, ironically, too depressing a thought. 

 

Ultimately, I think Ray Brassier is right to argue that philosophy should do more than simply further human conceit and that its nihilistic destiny is to acknowledge the fact that thinking has interests that do not coincide with the feelings of the philosopher (nor, indeed, with his life and wellbeing) [4]. Whilst it might be fun, therefore, to look for correlations between psychological traits and philosophical beliefs, there's more important work to be done by those courageous (or perhaps crazy) enough to do it. 

 

 

III.

 

Having said that, like Woolfe, I found it interesting to discover from the work of David Yaden and Derek Anderson [5] that those who, like me, subscribe to a model of hard determinism tend to rank higher on the depression/anxiety index [6]

 

I've certainly been feeling fed up lately and perhaps that is due (in part at least) to my philosophical pessimism. However, I'd rather be down in the dumps but intellectually honest, than happy and full of false hope as a result of only reading optimistic authors who pangloss over the tragic character of existence. 

 

And, who knows, just as one can eventually transform suffering into a form of passion via which one discovers bliss, perhaps we might also transform the darkest depression and profoundest pessimism into a form of fröhliche Wissenschaft. As Woolfe notes, "it is certainly possible and consistent to live a happy, joyful, and meaningful life while taking philosophical pessimism seriously".

 

So, my advice is keep reading Schopenhauer and Cioran, invent new reasons to live each day and, when stuck in a hole, just keep digging and discover for yourself whether there's any truth in the China syndrome. 

 

For even if Woolfe is right to conclude that some philosophical ideas - such as antinatalism, solipsism, or existential absurdism - may contribute to or worsen poor mental health [7], so what? I sometimes think better madness (or at least a few sleepless nights) than the bourgeois model of sanity (or common sense) we are expected to preserve. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the TTA Events page for an abstract to the talk 'In Praise of Mourning' (presented at Christian Michel's 6/20 Club, on 6 July 2023): click here.  

 

[2] Sam Woolfe, 'Can Philosophy Harm Your Mental Health?' on samwoolfe.com

      Whilst I'm not sure we'd agree on all that much, I admire the fact that Woolfe has maintained a blog since 2012 (the same year that Torpedo the Ark began) and that he describes himself as a writer with "a penchant for complex and challenging subjects that involve a multitude of perspectives".  

 

[3] See Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886). In §6 of the first chapter of this work - 'On the Prejudices of Philosophers' - he famously writes: 

      

"It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy has hitherto been: a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir [...]" 

      

I am using R. J. Hollingdale's translation of this work (Penguin Books, 1990).  

 

[4] Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), xi. 

 

[5] See David B. Yaden and Derek E. Anderson, 'The psychology of philosophy: Associating philosophical views with psychological traits in professional philosophers', Philosophical Psychology, Vol. 34, Issue 5 (Taylor & Francis, 2021), pp. 721-755. DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2021.1915972

[6] As Woolfe points out, for those who wish to posit a link between determinism and mental illness, it makes sense that a lack of belief in free will can be associated with depression, given that the latter is often characterised by feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.

 

[7] What Woolfe actually says is this: 

 

"I would not go so far as to say that reading or studying philosophy is likely to be the major defining cause of a mental disorder. But I am open to the possibility that some philosophical ideas - and philosophising itself - may contribute to, worsen, or vindicate poor mental health." 

 

The fact that he adds the idea of vindication is certainly striking and something readers might like to consider for themselves.