Date posted: November 28, 2004

Luc Tuymans: Kunstsammlung Nordrheinwestfalen

Kunstsammlung Nordrheinwestfalen, Düsseldorf (until 16 January 2005)

Luc Tuymans is regarded as one of the most important contemporary painters. I have seen his work on various occasions but never quite understood why, a good reason to visit the overview of his work currently at the Kunstsammlung Nordrheinwestfalen in Düsseldorf.

Luc Tuymans paints as if he couldn’t be bothered himself. He normally finishes a painting within a day. He uses very little paint and prefers pale, faded colors on bleached out backgrounds. Calling them pastels would probably anger Tuymans. I’m not sure whether they are either. Occasionally he uses dark colors.

The indifference in his work is only apparent. To Tuymans painting matters. It matters to make a painting of a faceless Alfred Speer on skis and of other prominent Nazis during a holiday in the mountains, because, according to Tuymans, it shows the “banality of evil”. Hardly an original insight but I don't know whether Tuymans is claiming to be original. He likes to refer to his work as 'authentic forgery', again this is not really an original idea, but then again it may apply to the idea itself as well. None of this matters. It does matter to add some touches of paint to a canvas and call it “Bloodstains” (1993). Another painting depicts what looks like the outline of a tulip or the head of a cat, what could be a sandbox or a cat’s box, two dark rectangular patches of paint that could be windows and two smaller round patches. It is called “Child Abuse” (1989). This is what matters. The title changes our perception. It is an essential aspect of the work.

One of Tuymans’ best known paintings could be an abstract painting until you read the title, “Gas Chamber” (1986). It has become accepted to call this ‘shocking’. What appears to be an idyllic scene or in the case of "Child Abuse" a pleasant configuration of shapes and colors is in fact a gruesome image. But is it also shocking? As shocking as when you learn that what you’ve just eaten and which, as a matter of fact, tasted rather good, is in fact something quite horrible? I must say that although I understand what Tuymans is after I just took in the information. This may be because after a few paintings with incongruent titles you just take it for granted. I couldn't even be bothered to look at the title of each and every work.

“Still Life” (2002) depicts a plate with some fruit and a jar half full of water in Tuymans’ signature style. It could be Tuymans doing Cezanne, a painterly comment on the still life. But as it turns out the painting is a response to the attacks of September 11. As Tuymans said in an interview “In Still Life the idea of banality becomes larger-than-life, it is taken to an impossible extreme. It’s actually just an icon, an almost purely cerebral painting, more like a light projection… The attacks [of 9/11] were also an assault on aesthetics. That gave me the idea of reacting with a sort of anti-picture, with an idylle, albeit an inherently twisted one.” It is actually a good story, although the painting does of course show that the extreme is not impossible at all. The only problem is that without this explanation the painting is just a still life. Of course this is true of many images, it's just that I have the feeling that given his intentions Tuymans hasn't thought through the full extent of what he is saying. He could also have bought a painting on the flea market and re-appropriated it for the same purpose.

In the leaflet accompanying the exhibition when it was on show at the Tate Modern, earlier this year, we read of a painting called “Bend Over” (2001) that it expresses “extreme vulnerability”. “The thin bent figure, who may be a man or a woman, exposes his or her barely-clad bottom to the viewer, as if caught the moment before an act of violence. Tuymans places the viewer in the position of perpetrator, deliberately implicating us in the unknown but implicitly horrific events.” But why “as if caught before an act of violence”? Why can’t the person just be bending forward to pick up a shirt from the floor? This kind of rhetoric gears the viewer towards one interpretation, one alleged meaning of the work. And why does the orchid in “Orchid” (1998), pictured above, emanate poison rather than fragrance, as it says in the leaflet for the Düsseldorf show? There is nothing in the painting or its title that refers to either fragrance or poison.

Of course one cannot blame Tuymans for the interpretations of art critics, except that much of what we read about his work originates in interviews with Tuymans himself. Many artists and writers leave their work open to each person's own interpretation. With Tuymans it is almost the opposite. It is as if he feels there is only one correct way of interpreting his work. This I find ideological.

In itself his technique is actually quite interesting and it has given rise to some paintings that intrigue because they appear almost self-effacing. They are beautiful despite Tuymans' own intentions. They also looked surprisingly good in the lower floor of the K21 building of the Kunstsammlung Nordrheinwestfalen. The light wooden floor of the exhibition space looked as if some flour had been spilled matching the paintings' pale palette. For a total experience if you’re going to see the show, you may want to put on Sigor Ros on your iPod.

Some works by Luc Tuymans can be viewed here.