His 2-year-old daughter, Stella, completely naked, jumps on an unmade motel bed, joy blooming across her face. You may have even posted a photo just like it of your own kid. Or maybe you shared a snapshot of your little one, frolicking outside, lifting her dress — in that unselfconscious way every toddler does. Neumann, a professional photographer, posted these and more on Instagram. Many of the ensuing comments were profanity-laced.
Marlene Dumas is like Marmite. You either love her or you hate her. These female figures have been dredged from the very edges of the world, complying perforce with their own exploitation, spreading their legs, squeezing their breasts together, looking at the viewer through bruised thighs. Dumas's way of painting them veils them, dissolves their edges as if by pooling body fluids. Some people rage that she is adding to her subjects' humiliation and exploiting them in her turn, but it seems to me that her frame of reference includes the rest of us in a single venal culture that lives by prostituting everything, including art.