I See a Woman Crying (Weeping Woman)

2009

Rineke Dijkstra

Artist, Dutch, born 1959

Three still images from a video installation show the faces of four pale-skinned age children wearing school uniforms against white backgrounds. The uniforms consist of white dress shirts, red ties, and gray vests or sweaters. From left to right, the first image shows a boy gaping, mouth open. The middle picture shows two boys, one of whom slings an arm onto the other’s shoulder. One looks steadily on, the other with brows furrowed. The image to our right shows a girl wearing glasses, her hair in thin braids. She also looks steadily at something out of our view. The shoulders and elbows of students sitting next to or standing behind those we see are visible. The three images are printed close together in a row, like a sideways piece of film.
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The Gallery's first work by the Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra (b. 1959), a three-channel HD video installation with sound, the purchase of which was made possible by Joseph M. Cohen and the Collectors Committee.

For two decades, Dijkstra has been celebrated for her penetrating portraits that strive to reveal, as she has said, “the specialness of the ordinary.” While she is acclaimed for her large-scale photographs that express emotional depth and complexity, she has also made videos since the mid-1990s. The most accomplished of these is I See a Woman Crying (Weeping Woman) (2009).

The work consists of three adjacent screens across which viewers see nine British boys and girls, all about 11 years old, wearing Catholic school uniforms and standing before a white background. They have been asked to speak about a painting that is never shown or identified in the video: Picasso’s Weeping Woman (1937, Tate Modern). They begin by slowly describing the painting, yet their remarks quickly escalate as their imaginations are sparked: “Maybe her stepmum was like…evil; maybe nobody liked her”; “Maybe that’s a million-pound bill and she can’t pay it.”

With the naïveté of youth and the safety of a group of friends, the children are unconcerned with providing the “right” answers and instead simply express their ideas. Thus, the video achieves the same level of startling authenticity that Dijkstra captures in her still photographs.


Artwork overview


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Rineke Dijkstra; NGA purchase (through Marian Goodman Gallery, New York), 2013.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2016

  • Collectors Committee gifts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, December 10, 2016 - July 16, 2017

Wikidata ID

Q62471115


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