Selfportrait at Noon

Marlene Dumas painted Self-portrait at Noon one year after her mother died in September 2007, at precisely twelve o’clock in the afternoon. The title suggests a moment caught in time: no slow, patient observation of self, but a quick, almost photographic impression, like a fleeting glimpse in the mirror. As she often does, Dumas based the painting on existing imagery – in this case, Polaroids taken of the artist by her daughter. She found them a fitting likeness: ‘They look almost like I felt [when my mother died], but sure, that’s also how you look when you’re really hungover,’ she said in 2008.

Dumas painted the portrait in a single fluid session using thinned paint and quick, light brushstrokes that leave the white underground exposed in various places. She has made hardly any corrections, except for changing the eyes from closed to open. This alteration lends the face a somewhat distant, mask-like effect.

Themes of death, love, sorrow and shame form a red thread running through Dumas’ oeuvre. Self-portrait at Noon is part of a series of works in which she explores loss, identity and vulnerability. Whereas earlier self-portraits such as Die Selfportret (1983) and Evil is Banal (1984) toyed with ideas of self image and representation, this work is more intimate and personal in nature: a moment of grief and existential reflection. At the same time, she also saw the painting as an object in which her likeness is merely a vehicle for exploring larger themes and painterly challenges.

Soon after it was painted in 2008, Self-portrait at Noon was displayed in For Whom the Bell Tolls (Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp), an exhibition about life, death and powerlessness. Besides Self-portrait at Noon, Dumas also showed paintings of movie stars like Ingrid Bergman and Marilyn Monroe weeping, a way to express the sorrow caused by her mother’s death. About the series, she has said the following: ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls was about loss and departure, but also about transformation and freedom. A spirit set free, my grief and her relief.’