Liz Taylor 1993

Marlene Dumas made this Liz Taylor in 1993, with what looks like ink or watercolor on paper. The washes create soft tones across the face, which is so different from the public persona of the actress, all that movie-star glamour. You get a sense of the artist behind the work trying to peel away the celebrity and find something more raw and vulnerable. I'm thinking about that moment when the brush hits the paper, Dumas must have felt like she was in the same room as Liz, trying to meet her gaze. There’s this one dark stroke under the lower lip, so simple but it gives the face so much weight. It reminds me of Warhol's pop portraits but with a deeper sense of interiority. And of course the whispers of Goya and Manet. It’s interesting to see how artists are always in dialogue with one another, how they see the world and then translate what they see into something new and unexpected. Like echoes in a room, each one changes the shape of the sound.