Marlene Dumas. Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts. Part One

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Marlene Dumas

Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts. Part One

Edited by Mariska van den Berg

Second edition, revised and expanded

Londra, Koenig Books, 2014

(Review by Francesco Mazzaferro)

[Original version: March 2015 - New version: April 2019]

Fig. 1) 'Sweet Nothings': the first edition (1998).
a co-prodution by Marlene Dumas and the Paul Andriesse Gallery in Amsterdam

I am an artist who uses

secondhand images

and firsthand experiences

(From Blind Dates and drawn curtains, 1993)  [1]

Marlene Dumas, born in Cape Town in South Africa in 1953, is one of the most successful artists of the last decades. She is best known for her portraits, all inspired by printed images or photographs which she has (often, but not always) taken with the Polaroid. The shots are then reinterpreted and painted with watercolours, oil on canvas, ink, acrylic and other techniques. Ms Dumas - who has exhibited in Italy in Rivoli [2] (1995), Venice [3] (2003), Syracuse [4] (2004) and Milan [5] (2012) - is the subject of international interest, so much so that it has become a commonplace to define her as an artist of globalization. She wrote: "I could say: South Africa is my content and Holland is my form, but then, the images I deal with are familiar to almost everyone, everywhere." [6]

In 2014, a retrospective was held in the Netherlands (her country of choice), titled "The Image as Burden", at the Civic Museum of Amsterdam (in Dutch, Stedelijk Museum). Today, that exhibition is held at the Tate Modern in London, which attracted great interest. In the second half of the year, the exhibition will move to the Beyeler Foundation in Basel. Three appointments in three nerve centres of modern art, with the intention to show most of her production to the European public. To prove that the three exhibitions, in fact, are each part of a single project is the fact that there is only one catalogue [7] to document them, although there have been and there will be slight differences between an exhibition and the other: the Stedelijk has given more emphasis to the early works; the Tate Modern to political aspects; the Foundation Beyerler will insist on pictorial aspects and the use of materials.

As always, the title of the exhibition (The Image as Burden) was chosen by the painter, and inspired by a painting on which we will speak later on (in the second part of this review). It is a work that symbolizes the difficulties (the burden) that the artist has to endure when she must choose an image.

Visiting the exhibition in London, I had the impression of attending a testimony of continuity with the past: the return of portrait and genre painting, in an intimately neo-expressionist style which is, at the same time, both reminiscent of the European art hundred years ago as well as of primitive Dutch portraiture. In many aspects, it is a minimalist style; therefore, often the logic of visual art can be just found in the variations of a repeated theme, in the same way as the score of minimalist music is based on the ability of our brain to amplify the reaction to the slightest change tone, if repeated. Think of Steve Reich, to search for an equivalent.

It is Dumas herself to confirm her interest in the minimalist mechanisms, applying them to the use of the word. She does so using poetic verses, as we will see often:

"I have seen the glory and the power of the word.

I have experienced the power of repetition,

The intoxication of rhythmic rhetorical arousal." [8]

(From Why do I write (about Art), 1992)

Dumas is in fact also a recognized writer of art, and her writings have been included in the anthology of sources of contemporary art history by Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, whose second edition appeared in 2012. [9] Ms Dumas is hosted in the section dedicated to contemporary figurative art ('figuration') which extends for about 130 pages, from the texts of Max Beckmann in 1948 up to those of Takashi Murakami in 2000. [10]

In 2014, Marlene Dumas has published the second edition of her book entitled "Sweet Nothings" [11]: it is a revised and expanded collection of writings (especially aphorisms and poems) about art. The first edition had been published in 1998, and already then had aroused great interest. Comparing the two editions reveals that the structure of the original volume remained intact. The first 121 pages are identical: they offer, in chronological sequence, the same anthology of writings covering the years from 1982 (when Dumas was 29 years old, and had moved in Amsterdam, where she still lives, since six years) until 1997. An update follows, until page 169, with new texts composed between 1998 and 2014. The next section, entitled "Politics (of Art)", covering the years 1989 to 1997 in the first version (pp. 120-134), is reproduced without any modification in the second version (pp. 172-186). It is instead completely new the section "On Others 1986-2014", which includes testimonies and texts on other artists (all contemporaries, with the exception of van Gogh and Ingres) (pp. 191-220). Images, indexes and notes follow, with appropriate additions made in the second edition. 

The title of the book (Sweet Nothings) is evocative rather than explanatory (as often also happens even in the titles of her paintings): it is an idiomatic expression, used in English literature since the nineteenth-century romanticism, and defined as a series of "insubstantial or romantic words that are only meant to flatter, woo, or seduce"; our "parole dolci" (sweet words) if we want to find an Italian equivalent. Dumas, therefore, wants to deceive us with flattery, court us or even try to seduce us. Not surprisingly, in an interview with Alessandra Klimciuk published in the catalogue of the exhibition in Milan in 2012, she says: "I often address my audience as if it were my beloved, male or female." [12] She does the same with their readers, male or female.

It is clear that Marlene Dumas feels the primary need to use the word to explain her art, which otherwise (in her own opinion) would not be fully understood: as she is essentially a painter of genre (i.e. a portrait artist), she is also a writer of genre, linked to poetry, the dominant literary genre in Sweet Nothings. Of course, on other occasions (especially within the catalogues of exhibitions), also interviews and essays can be found. On the net you can also see some very spontaneous and interesting lectures [13]; but the fact remains that, when she has to put her art into words, Dumas uses poetry.

In selecting materials for the second edition of Sweet Nothings, the curator, i.e. Mariska van den Berg, noted that she had deliberately privileged the texts that are furthest away from a traditional writing: "Marlene Dumas has an entirely individual voice, which in no way conforms to the usual way of writing about art. The tone of her writing is personal, colored by emotion and a relativizing, sometimes sardonic, sense of humor, reflecting on the complexity of the human condition and the often problematic inter-human communications. 'If you really want to talk to others, get a good translator', she writes. She uses words and forms of address from everyday speech, often confronting the reader directly, in the ‘I’ or 'you' form. Where in her art she starts working from existing images, in her writing she draws on existing literary forms. When writing about love, she plays with cryptic and teasing saying, the love letter or poem, all as a means of finally saying something about art. In her own words [14] she uses 'all the cheap tricks' to attract attention and confront the observer directly (...)." [15]

Reading the lyrics by Dumas certainly arouses strong emotions and raises questions, just like to see her paintings. That images and words are inextricably linked to each other is also demonstrated by the organisation of her exhibitions, (such as the one at the Tate Modern), where the visitor is confronted with the alternation of pictures and aphorisms by the artist. Obviously, that connection is even closer within the catalogue.

In reality, the texts of Dumas do not provide answers; perhaps (as sometimes she suggests, even if later on she seems to change views) poems and aphorisms articulate the same issues, in writing, as those which paintings pose in visual form: the questions that the artwork addresses to the viewer, as well as the interrogations which the poetic text asks to the reader. Certainly, Marlene Dumas prefers raising questions to giving answers: not surprisingly, she has repeatedly written not to love being interviewed. In 1987, in fact, she has published a paper entitled "No more Interviews".

"1. I don’t want to give any more 'spontaneous' interviews. It presupposes an ease which I don’t have with my interviewer, or with the interview situation. It’s a sham spontaneity.

2. The informality of the spoken word and the formality of the written word are two separate things. Now more than ever.

3. A respect for (or making a distinction between) private and public matters is something that is being increasingly undervalued.

4. In oral conversations, gestures (along with tone, emphasis, allure) are extremely important. But the interviewer does not translate these things. I’m not there when he or she writes about me. And neither do I want him or her with me when I answer their questions. In this way, there’s no disguising the artificiality of the conversation, and the written material is more genuinely reflective.

5. I'm not an entertainer.

6. I can’t think things over properly with a stranger facing me.

7. Art is not a suitable subject for snappy answers or the brilliant one-liner.

8. The opposite of openness is not always elitism. People have a fundamental need for privacy, particularly in a world bombarded by messages, and psychological snares and media manipulation, which have nothing to do with friendship or with in-depth research or analysis.

9. I don’t speak Dutch.

10. I have a gallery that is aware of my points of view."

(From No more Interviews, 1987) [16]

When you consider that Dumas’ entire artistic production originates from the processing of photographic images, you can perhaps venture a system of equivalences, which can be so described: for the South African painter, painting is to poetry as the photographic image is to non-fiction. On the relationship between painting and poetry Dumas says: "I wish my paintings were like poems. Poems are like sentences that are stripped of their clothes. The meaning of a poem lies in what makes his heart to beat, in his rhythm. The way in which the words move on the page. Poetry is a writing that breathes, makes jumps, and leaves open spaces, so that we can read between the lines." [17]

Only the first part of this equivalence (painting and poetry) is explicit for to the public; the second part (photography and essays) exists, is also fundamental, has the same creative value, but is almost never revealed. It is indeed the object of a research to which the public is invited: from which photo may the picture have been derived, and what is the value of poetry for art criticism?

Why do I write (about Art)

I write about art because I am a believer.

I believe

in the power

of words

especially the

WRITTEN WORD. [18]

(From Why do I write (about Art), 1992)

With these verses, a programmatic text is opened, entitled "Why do I write (about Art)", written for the conference "Writing about Art" which was held in Eindhoven between 30 November and 1 December 1991 [19]. It is a text of three pages in which the verses are alternating with prose.

The conference in Eindhoven was the opportunity for artists, critics, philosophers and curators to discuss on whether and how to reconcile the writings of art critics and those of the artists. The first may have a promotional nature, be objective, explanatory and technical by nature, while the latter, by their nature, tend to be independent from any event, subjective, explaining the intention and colloquial.

The debate arose as a result of the statements of the writer and intellectual Susan Sontag, who had taken a hard stand against the art critics: "Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world." [20]

The conference was attended by conceptual artists such as Joseph Kosuth (author of a very wide critical production of analytical character, whose publication opened the collection of sources of contemporary art history at MIT, the "MIT Press Writing Art Series", in 1991 [21]). Kosuth theorizes that the involvement of the artist in every critical discourse on his artwork must be both a necessary and minimum condition to make sure the artist himself can maintain his freedom, avoiding the commodification of his work.

The intervention of Dumas to the conference is summarized by its curator, Selma Klein Essink: "In an emotional contribution Marlene Dumas examines her own reasons for writing about art. They include: (i) belief in the power of the written word; (ii) the enjoyment of writing; (iii) taking part in writing her own history; (iv) refining her own confusions and contradictions about such issues as what role art can still play in our society; (V) being amused by the politics of interpretation, (vi) wanting to write in a different way to most art critics - not being pompous, academically pedantic or short-sighted contrary; (vii) not promoting, defending or explaining, but rather as an apology." [22]

Commenting the original text within Sweet Nothings, Mariska van den Berg (editor of the anthology) adds that Ms Dumas is convinced that a work of art cannot speak for itself. "If an artwork does not contain all the necessary information within itself- and it does not, she says - then discussion is of vital importance to its contextualization. In this discussion she [Marlene Dumas] wants to speak for herself, not to avoid misunderstanding as she believes that there is ‘no correct interpretation' of her work, but ‘interpretations can be more or less creative'." [23]

Hereafter Marlene Dumas speaks (in verse) on the motivations of her contribution to the artistic literature:

"I write because I enjoy writing.

I write about art because it supplies a (safe) context. It is a

privilege to be able to read and be read. What a pleasure to have

conversations with human beings (dead and alive) without having

to see them. (...)

I write about my own work because I want to speak for myself.

I might not be the only authority, nor the best authority, but I want to participate in the writing about my own history. Why should artists be validated by outside authorities? I do not like being paternalised and colonialised by every Tom, Dick or Harry that comes along (male or female)."  [24]

(From Why do I write (about Art), 1992)

Also here emerges the influence of Susan Sontag. The text continues, transforming itself from poetry into prose:

 "The overexposure of 'Meaning' and its mistreatment. It is not a fear of being ‘misunderstood’ that drives me to write (not anymore). 'Meaning' and 'Mis-understanding' are not as useful as terms to describe visual issues. De- and re-contextualization are part and parcel of creative experiences. Even Duchamp mentioned the relationship between the 'unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed'. Seeing that the so-called passive spectator has disappeared, we are stuck with (over)active collaborators, finishing off the artworks. Accepting freedom of speech, that is inevitable. But it is a question of distinguishing between who says what (and to the benefit of whom?). Critics should not adhere to the intentional fallacy in reverse - playing Freud to reveal my true intentions to me. Artwork is not synonymous to intention. It is peculiar that although almost everybody says that artworks don’t give answers, they seem to be sure that a good work asks questions. It sounds like the other side of the same coin to me. What artworks do, the roles can or do still play in our society, is unclear to me. Writing about art refines my own confusions and contradictions about these matters." [25]

Citing Duchamp again (but this time to disapprove him), Dumas tells how his famous expression 'bête comme un peintre' (stupid as painter) had offended her in the formative years. "Painters seemed incapable of any serious critique of their own assumptions (they still do). Yet theorising that has been seen as the criterion for intelligence has been challenged by many." And she adds: "There are more ways to write that the human mind can conceive of. I‘d like to paint love songs and write like a rapsong..." [26]

The role of writing: a leitmotif from 1982 to date

In chronological order, the first text published in Sweet Nothings is dated 1982 (the painter is twenty-nine years old and writes for her first exhibition at Art Basel, on the occasion of an exhibition entitled "Young Art from the Netherlands, Form and Expression"). Dumas immediately asks herself the central question:

"Is commentary useful? I say yes.

Is not all the necessary information

contained in the work itself? I say no.

It is largely contained outside

the work." [27]

(From Some Qualities I exhibit, 1982)

The poem "On Words and Images" is dated 1984:

"I can see why many visual artists

dislike words in artworks. They feel

that words dirty the clear water that

has to reflect the sky. It disturbs

the pleasure of the silent image,

the freedom from history, the beauty

of nameless forms.

I want to name our paints.

I want to keep on changing

our names.

I know that neither images nor words,

can escape the drunkenness and

longing caused by the turning

of the world.

Words and images drink the

same wine.

There is no purity to protect."  [28]

And a text of 1990 has very harsh tones, as it clarifies that - in his opinion – to search for the meaning of a work of art is, in itself, completely useless:

"The Artwork as Misunderstanding

There is a crisis with regard to Representation.

They are looking for Meaning as if it was a thing.

As if it was a girl, required to take her panties off

as if she would want to do so, as soon as

the true interpreter comes along.

As if there was something to take off." [29]

This review of the texts in which Ms Dumas emphasizes the importance of written language for art ends in 2009, with seemingly softer tone, referring to the risk of an ideological manipulation of images, that only the presence of a written text can avoid.

"Focussing on the perpetrators rather than the victims, it included Piotr Uklanski’s work Untitled (The Nazis), compiled of 116 photographs of movie starts in Nazi roles. Without the clarifying text the possibility of attracting Neo-Nazi’s is always possible. Which reminds me of the fact that every image needs a text to protect it ... and every text needs someone to de-code it."

(from The Third World War, 2009) [30]

Adding a text to images therefore also serves to prevent they can be manipulated.

The role of the image

To catch all the different facets with which Dumas motivates her own interest in the picture is not that simple. It is a repeated mechanism of transformation: first from the real image to the camera, and then from that camera to the painting. It never happens that the painter directly makes us of her artistic skills to portray a model or a scene from life (even the portraits of his daughter are all originated in shots operated with her beloved Polaroid).

"My people were all shot

by a camera, framed,

before I painted them. They did not know that I’d do this to them." [31]

(From The Eyes of the Night Creatures, 1985)

This is not a simple exercise of pictorial realism through the camera. And in fact, in 1990, Dumas writes in "The World is flat": ​​"It is not the relationship between painting and photography that is the most prominent question today. The fact is that the photografic, not photography as a specific medium but a particular mode of signifying, is affecting all the arts at the moment." [32]

Therefore, the photographic image needs to have the potential, at least in theory, to be transformed into a pictorial image. Dumas is therefore primarily a collector of pictures and clippings of images (some tens of thousands), which she then uses in search of artistic inspiration. "Since I use photographs as source material for my compositions, the choice of the right (appropriate) image is very important. The image must carry with itself the possibility of being able to be transformed into a medial instrument (water and ink or oil on canvas). I do not try to imitate photography, I use photography." [33]

All steps (from the observation of the picture to its translation in painting) substantially modify the image and its meaning. Also in the above quoted "The Eyes of the Night Creatures", of 1985, Dumas goes on to explain that, with its images, she captures souls. The image hosts what she calls "passive tensions". In 1992 she adds: "With my own paintings, (...) the characters are mostly inactive and empty handed. In most cases the drama is psychological rather than pictorial (especially in the portraits). As the potential for narrative increases by including attributes and / or action (the small boy in Snowwhite and the Wrong Story; the clutching of the camera in Snowwhite and the Broken Arm) the paintings become more dramatic in a theatrical sense. In the Black Drawings, however, we are 'back' where we started with the Night Creatures, in some essential way. The narrative has desolved into ‘presence'. The viewers are back in the courtroom." [34]

And in a paper in 1990 entitled "The World is flat" states: "One cannot equate representation with content, this is a very popular misconception. Painting (especially) is not a registration of facts or a documentation of information. It is an interpretation. It is forced to be so by its nature."  [35]

Art as an autonomous dimension from reality

If Dumas cultivates the genre of portraiture, she is well aware that her images are artificial, flat, made of oil paint and paint, not of flesh and blood.

"And I am also aware of the differences between
human beings and artificial images. That oil and
paint, not flesh and blood, run through their veins.
My figures know that too. And like some fallen angels do
they blame me (and you) for creating them
to exist in the land of abstraction - called art."  [36]

So art and life do not belong to the same category. "Whether we wish to recognize it or not, making art removes us from life as a dynamic process. That’s why I find statements like ‘life is art' completely meaningless - too over-simplified, a blanket term." [37]

The painting does not have its own life without a wall where to lean (and to which to object): "A painting needs a wall to object to" [38] is her best-known aphorism, dated 1995.

Ms Dumas here dwells on some of the key issues of the current of contemporary art which - since the so-called ‘ready-made’ of Duchamp - appropriates external objects to the art for use in a different context, the artwork. This is the so-called appropriation art (in a very different way, it is also practiced by Jeff Koons). In the case of Dumas, the object that is appropriated is the photographic image: however, the artwork in which the image is re-contextualized has full autonomy.

Citing the American art critic Thomas McEvilley, the theorist of the revival of painting in the famous “The Exile’s Return: Toward a Redefinition of Painting for the Post-Modern Era”, Dumas writes:

"What do we mean when we talk about the content of a work of art? Content is not one thing. Content is a complex network of relationships. The best art essay I've read so far is that by Thomas McEvilley. He focusses out attention on the following thirteen categories.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird [Translator's Note: The title is taken from a famous poem by Wallace Stevens]

1. Content that arises from that aspect of the artwork that is understood as representational.

2. Content arising from verbal supplements supplied by the artist.

3. Content arising from the genre or medium of the artwork.

4. Content arising from the material of which the artwork is made.

5. Content arising from the scale of the artwork.

6. Content arising from the temporal duration of the artwork.

7. Content arising from the context of the work.

8. Content arising from the work’s relationship with art history.

9. Content that accrues to the work as it progressively reveals its destiny through persisting in time.

10. Content arising from participation in a specific iconographic tradition.

11. Content arising directly from the formal properties of the work.

12. Content arising from attitudinal gestures (wit, irony, parody, and so on) that may appear as qualifiers of any of the categories already mentioned.

13. Content rooted in biological or physical responses, or in cognitive awareness of them." [39]

End of Part One
Go to Part Two 

NOTES

[1] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, Second edition, revised and expanded, edited by Mariska van den Berg, London, Koenig Books, 2014, 256 pages. Quotation  at page 80.

[2] http://www.castellodirivoli.org/mostra/marlene-dumas-francis-bacon/

[3] http://www.marlenedumas.nl/suspect/

[4] Together with Marijke van Warmerdam. See: 
http://www.exibart.com/Print/notizia.asp?IDNotizia=10147&IDCategoria=79

[5] http://www.marlenedumas.nl/marlene-dumas-in-fondazione-stelline/

[6] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 85

[7] Marlene Dumas. The Image as Burden, Londra, Tate Publishing, 2014, pagine 196.

[8] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 11

[9] Stiles Kristine e Selz, Peter, A sourcebook of artists’ writings, Second edition, Revised and Expanded by Kristine Stiles, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2012

[10] A wide selection of the writings of Dumas is also available on her official website, in English and Dutch, at http://www.marlenedumas.nl/texts/.

[11] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 11

[12] Marlene Dumas. Sorte, edited by Giorgio Verzotti, Milano, Silvana Editoriale, 2012. Quotation at page 94.

[13] See for example http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/34 (a lecture at the MoMa of New York, of  a length of one hour and ten minutes) and http://www.stedelijk.nl/en/calendar/booklaunch/marlene-dumas-sweet-nothings-notes-and-texts (the presentation of the second edition of Sweet Nothings, on 14 December 2014, of a time length of 42 minutes).

[14] “I use all the cheap tricks of attracting attention: eyes looking at you, sexual parts exposed or deliberately covered. The primitive pull of recognition. The image as prostitute. You are forced to say yes or no.” From: “The perfect Lover, the absent Lover and the Daughter, 1996” Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014, p. 107

[15] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 pp. 8-9.

[16] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 40

[17] Marlene Dumas - Sorte (quoted), p. 96

[18] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 11

[19] Programme and programmatic text of the 1991 conference are available at http://alexandria.tue.nl/vanabbe/public/publiciteit/uitnodigingen/1991/UitnodigingSymposiumWritingaboutArt.pdf, http://alexandria.tue.nl/vanabbe/public/publiciteit/toespraken/1991/ToespraakSymposiumWritingaboutArt.pdf and http://alexandria.tue.nl/vanabbe/public/publiciteit/folders/1991/FolderSymposiumWritingaboutArt.pdf 

[20] Sontag, Susan - Against Interpretation and Other Essays, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966. See http://www.uiowa.edu/~c08g001d/Sontag_AgainstInterp.pdf

[21] The text of Art after philosophy and after by Joseph Kosuth is available at:  https://activitiesandassignments.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/ccs_kosuth-art1.pdf

[22] See in particular 
http://alexandria.tue.nl/vanabbe/public/publiciteit/toespraken/1991/ToespraakSymposiumWritingaboutArt.pdf

[23] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 8

[24] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 8

[25] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 pp.11-12

[26] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 12

[27] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 15

[28] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 25

[29] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 60

[30] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p.p.154-155

[31] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 26

[32] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 56

[33] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 106

[34] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 67

[35] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 57

[36] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 47

[37] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 58

[38] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 102-103

[39] Dumas, Marlene – Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, (quoted), 2014 p. 57