Let's face it, there really is nothing like the face. Lovers dream of faces, poets stretch and struggle to juggle the words so that they might capture and communicate a countenance. Even businesspeople, the ultimate pragmatists, will travel across towns or oceans — when a telephone or e-mail could serve to exchange the same information — in order to meet face-to-face.
In contemporary culture, faces are mediated principally through the pervasive print and electronic media. Against this backdrop, South African-born, Dutch-based Marlene Dumas, 53, employs a decidedly painterly style to represent rather than reproduce the face. "Broken White," her current exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MoT), comprises some 250 works, mostly portraits in oil on canvas, or charcoal, diffused watercolor or Indian ink on paper.
The show is well designed: airy, with plenty of white space on the museum's big walls emphasizing the forceful presence of the pictures. What basically unites Dumas' work is a specific disregard for naturalism, with splashes and splotches and bleeding green and blue pallors taking the place of flesh tones. The lines, meanwhile, are characterized by simplified or distorted perspectives and exaggerated asymmetry.