Samenvatting

An analysis is made of how the painting The Kleptomaniac (2005) by Marlene Dumas – especially through its title – represents a certain kind of criminal and what ethical implications this has. A discussion of art historical research on the genesis of the original Portrait of a kleptomaniac (ca. 1820) from which Dumas has taken the title for her painting, is followed by a discussion of the history of the concept of kleptomania in psychiatry and an analysis of how that concept is reproduced by Dumas’ painting and, in particular, its title: The Kleptomaniac. By giving a painting of a male face this title in 2005 a type of criminal is represented in a way that does not do justice to the history of the concept and the phenomenon itself. By mobilizing a contested and obsolete psychiatric concept for an artistic project, the ambiguity which the painter intended is not left intact but, in fact, destroyed by an allusive title which mystifies the subject while having a disorienting effect on the viewer of the painting.