{"data":{"id":"2636","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":2636,"topgoose_id":2457,"tms_id":2636,"display_name":"Carroll Dunham","sort_name":"Dunham Carroll","display_date":"1949–","begin_date":"1949","end_date":"0","biography":"\u003cp\u003eCarroll Dunham has retained a highly\npersonal style of painting across four\ndecades, investigating the pictorial aspects\nof painting in works that reveal diverse\nreferences, including Surrealism, classical\nlandscape painting, and cartoons. Dunham\nhas also looked to art-historical figures\nas varied as Gustav Courbet, Paul Cézanne,\nPierre-Auguste Renoir, Pontormo, Tarsila\ndo Amaral, and Sidney Nolan, and to\nhis own earlier works. “Painting responds\nto painting,” Dunham has written.\n\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn recent years Dunham’s imagination\nhas been occupied by scenes of bathers,\na popular subject among French artists\nat the turn of the last century. He worked\noff and on for six years to create\u003ca href=\"/collection/works/44295\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;Large\nBather (quicksand)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which eventually\nbecame the centerpiece of a series of six\npaintings. The stark white bather—her\nvisage hidden and each of her four limbs\ntruncated—jarringly divides the landscape\ninto quadrants, placing her genitalia\nmanifestly visible at the center. It is from\nthis point, demarcated with an X, that\nDunham began the composition, building\noutward. The organizational point of\norigin may reflect his initial impulse to create\nthe bathers: as Dunham stated, the paintings\nhad “nothing to do with pornography for\nme: zero. They really have much more to do\nwith my mother and the kind of universality\nof that: we all have one.” The landscape\nhere initially appears to be a tropical paradise\nbut in fact features felled and severed\ntrees, trampled flowers, and an ominous pool\nof quicksand—elements that seem to allude\nto a larger disruption in this natural world.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500110733","wikidata_id":"Q1045182","created_at":"2017-08-30T17:23:08.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-13T07:02:38.684-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/2636/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/2636/exhibitions"}}}}