Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art Marlene Dumas painted "The Kiss," an oil-on-canvas work, in 2003. More than 70 paintings and three dozen drawings are on exhibit.

Death is a common theme in Dumas' work. This 2008 oil-on-canvas, titled "Dead Marilyn," was inspired by Marilyn Monroe's autopsy photo.

Images Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art Marlene Dumas' career-spanning exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art gets its name from this 2003 oil-on-canvas work, which is titled "Measuring Your Own Grave."

If you're reading this story about Marlene Dumas' first major American exhibit, then your eyes have probably already gazed upon the pictures of her work that accompany this text.

Dumas, a renowned neo-expressionist painter, would be both pleased — and disappointed.

The South African-born artist, who is now based in Amsterdam, believes that her work must be seen in its original form, not in a reproduction, to be fully appreciated and understood.

She has a point. Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave, on exhibit now at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, includes more than 70 paintings and three dozen drawings. Some of the galleries contain only four or five of the larger canvases, allowing their heavy but precise brush strokes and subject matter — frequently death or frank sexuality — to envelop the viewer.

Other rooms display extensive studies consisting of several notebook paper-sized drawings or paintings, which, upon viewing separately and as a unit, deliver an intimate message that paintings pictured in a newspaper simply cannot convey.

Still, Dumas accepts that print media is an effective, if not emotionally effective, way to introduce more people to her work.

Compared to colleagues such as Julian Schnabel and Francesco Clemente, Dumas' profile is relatively low. Still, she is popular in Europe and also somewhat controversial because her subject matter often includes children in adult-looking poses.

"I've been seen in Los Angeles before, but only a few pieces here and there," she said.

At the Museum of Contemporary Art, a 30-year swath of Dumas' work hangs on the walls, allowing visitors to become acquainted with the work of the woman who holds the record as the highest-paid living female artist (in 2005, a Dumas painting sold for $3.3 million).

Art fans will be able to take in a range of harsh but memorable images.

There's "The Painter," a more than 6-foot-tall portrait in flesh and grey tones of an unclothed little girl, her face stoic and mature, with one hand bathed in red, the other in blue.

Several depictions are of death, including one re-creating the autopsy photo of Marilyn Monroe, which is one of Dumas' most recent pieces. Cold and infused with blue hues, it's a close representation of the actual Monroe photo, which lacks any of the vitality and beauty that Monroe exuded in life.

Although death and abuse is part of Dumas' main subject matter, she frequently has remarked that she rarely depicts violence in action. The same can be said of sex. Many of her subjects sell sex, but the portraits are not about sex as much as about the personalities and emotions of those involved.

The exhibition's title, Measuring Your Own Grave, comes from one of the paintings, in which the subject appears to be doing just what it says. Dumas doesn't appear to be covering any of these topics with the intent to titillate or to be sensational. She merely presents realities that not everyone wants to confront — but in such a compelling manner that it's hard to resist.

— E-mail freelance columnist Jeff Favre at jjfavre@yahoo.com.