Die kleur van vers en verf: Antjie Krog in gesprek met Marlene Dumas

Abstract

The colours of poem and paint: Antjie Krog in conversation with Marlene Dumas Antjie Krog engages South African born painter Marlene Dumas in an intertextual dialogue in her most recent anthology Kleur kom nooit alleen nie. This series of poems is titled “skilderysonnette” (sonnets of a painting). Six of the nine of Krog’s “word paintings” are eponymous with Dumas’s paintings and therefore almost require an examination of the interplay of the respective texts. This article examines the relationship between the relevant poems and paintings. The specific conversation between Krog’s word texts and Dumas’s paintings within the context of Krog’s anthology ultimately indicates intriguing similarities. It includes, inter alia, the struggle of both artists with the problem of “belonging” – Krog from an African perspective and Dumas from a European angle. Both are also concerned with the politics of colour. The politics of sex also figures in both their oeuvres in the third instance. The complexity of sexuality, eroticism and love is examined in the work of both these artists and is ultimately expressed in the voice/vision of the emancipated woman.