The Nose
2002
oil on canvas
11 3/4 x 9 1/2 in.
September 17, 2009 – January 3, 2010 at Wexner Center for the Arts
At a recent Wexner Center media event, Luc Tuymans lead a gaggle of donors, critics, reporters, and museum administrators on a tour of his current retrospective. About halfway through what was amounting to a painting-by-painting account of the artist’s career, the group paused in front of a piece titled The Nose. It’s a small painting, a portrait of sorts, but painted close-up so that the face fills the frame. Like a lot of Tuymans’s work, it appears deliberately cropped.
The face is that of a dark-complected man. He has a moustache and traces of a short, scrubby beard. As the title suggests, the nose is the prominent feature. It’s large and hooks slightly downward at the end. Tuymans explained that he’d completed this particular piece shortly after 9/11. He noted the vaguely Middle Eastern appearance of the man and then offered, “it could be a terrorist…but it’s not”. It was an off-hand comment, but one that spoke directly to understanding the artist’s work.
Luc Tuymans doesn’t trust images. He knows all too well how easy they are to manipulate. This distrust of image is perhaps an odd stance for a painter to take, but it does go a long way towards explaining why his work is so compelling. Tuymans paints what might be referred to as reproductions of reproductions. He often starts with a piece of source material, usually a photograph, a still from a documentary, or a story from recent history, and then transforms it through the physical process of painting. Tuymans is insistent that these final paintings are not just copies; he’s stated time and again that he’s making something new. And while that may be true, the original source still hovers around like a shadow or ghost, impossible to ignore.
As such, whatever version of “truth” existed in those original sources becomes further obscured through the process of artistic manipulation. Faces are blurred, key elements are cropped out, information is withheld, and actors are removed from context. By the time the viewer stands in front of a Tuymans painting, they find themselves in a kind of pictorial limbo, looking at something that is both independent of but still tethered to the original source.
Tracing
1994
oil on canvas
39 3/4 x 32 1/4 in.
It’s in this space between the source and the final painting that we learn how wholly unreliable (even unbelievable) images can be. Tracing is perhaps Tuymans’s most famous example of this lesson. A decorative floral pattern is presented in flat symmetry. It offers a sense of order and a kind of washed out nostalgia. It could be a painting of some Victorian clip art, or maybe a wallpaper sample…but it’s not. Rather, Tracing depicts a fabric pattern lifted from a chair in which someone was murdered.
This separation of what the viewer sees and what the viewer knows creates both tension and disorientation. Single paintings begin to function as two separate and simultaneous entities, like those famous optical illusions from children’s books. Is it a pretty young woman or an old hag? Is it a vase or two people in profile? Can it be one without being the other? There’s the painting you see (the delicate floral pattern), and then there’s the one you know about (the grisly murder).
Superstition
1994
oil on canvas
18 1/4 x 16 1/4 in.
All of this conceptual back and forth is given serious consideration partly because we’re all post-modern now, and partly because…well…Tuymans is a really good painter. He can set a mood even when painting the most innocuous of objects (see The Doll). His brushwork has the kind of casual sketchiness that makes painting look effortless. His interest in film is clear in the tense but balanced compositions he creates. Even his forays into symmetry (The Leg, Superstition, etc.) have a certain tension to them.
It’s the practice of Tuymans to finish each painting in a day. That approach accounts for why many of the works exhibit such spontaneity and lightness (subject matter notwithstanding). And while much has been made of Tuymans’s muted palette, there’s more color going on than first appears. A visit during a sunny day (earlier too, when the sun is still in the east or overhead) will reward viewers with some absolutely shimmering colors in the final gallery. Similarly, a number of paintings from the Mwana Kitoko series display a terrific sense of light.
Even in the context of such technical virtuosity though, the subject matter consistently taunts and challenges. Considering the artist’s intentions (“I want to make people think…to be confused and unnerved”.) this state of unease qualifies as a success. Tuymans’s work is more likely to confound than to clarify. His is a decidedly ambiguous posture, even anti-heroic, and one that doesn’t always fit with our notion of the artist as standard-bearer of truth.
In perhaps a nod to the admittedly traditional medium on display (i.e. representational painting), the exhibition is arranged in chronological order. This allows for several related groups of paintings to hang together again. The presentation provides a sensible transition within the gallery space and offers a better understanding of the works that relate specifically to one another. It’s fortuitous as well that as Tuymans’s work progresses, opens up, and becomes more expansive the gallery does too.
It has been noted that this exhibition is something of a contemporary blockbuster. It’s the first retrospective of arguably one of the most influential painters of our time. That our own Wexner Center is hosting the inaugural stop will add a touch of excitement to any visit. This opening show could be in San Francisco…but it’s not. It’s here, right now, in your city.
Go see it. You won’t believe your eyes.
Luc Tuymans is on view September 17, 2009 – January 3, 2010 at the Wexner Center for the Arts. For more information visit WexArts.org
Jeff Regensburger is a painter, librarian, and drummer in the (currently dormant) rock combo The Patsys. He received a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts (Painting and Drawing) from The Ohio State University in 1990 and an Master’s Degree in Library Science from Kent State University in 1997. Jeff blogs sporadically (OnSummit.blogspot.com), tweets occasionally (@jeffrey_r), and paints as time allows.