At first glance, the 19th-century poet Charles Baudelaire and star contemporary painter Marlene Dumas might not seem to have a lot in common. But an unprecedented exhibition of Dumas’s work in Paris shows the fascinating overlaps between the two minds. On view until January 30, 2022, the Musée d’Orsay is exhibiting 15 paintings by the acclaimed artist that draw on Baudelaire’s celebrated collection of writing called "Paris Spleen", a 50-poem compilation from 1869 that captures raw life in the French city of his time. Dumas’s recent paintings of elusive figures poised on the brink of ambiguous actions and thoughts suit Baudelaire’s meditations on modern society and its paradoxical joys that are often mixed with lurking cruelty.
For the first time, a contemporary artist’s works are also being hung alongside Impressionist masters on the Musée d’Orsay’s top floor in a second, concurrent exhibition called “Conversations,” where three major works by Dumas are on view. But the show was surrounded by sadness. Her partner, artist Jan Andriesse, died from cancer in 2020, and Dumas also lost her dear friend Hafid Bouazza, the celebrated Moroccan-Dutch writer who helped initiate and form the concept of the exhibition in Paris with Dumas. He died of Covid last year before the show opened. “Frustration, anger, and heartbreak regarding the suffering and eventual loss of two lives so dear to me ruled,” said Dumas.