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Next spring Luc Tuymans is turning 50. In lieu of a midlife crisis, he is preparing for two major surveys of his
work in 2008, at Haus der Kunst, Munich, and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio. Perhaps in
anticipation of those shows, this past summer he organized a smaller, more personal exhibition in his hometown
at the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp. "I Don't Get It" featured etchings, lithographs, source Polaroids,
films, and even a designated smoking room where footage of his murals screened-but no paintings. Modern
Paintersasked his compatriot Yasmine Van Pee to talk with Tuymans in their native Flemish and translate into
English his candid sentiments on politics, process, his curatorial projects, and his critics.
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refers to the ephemeral. It was shot on 16 mm film
and documented a performance which was in itself -0. 00W
the culmination of two or three years of working in
Super 8. It was filmed in collaboration with a friend
who's an actor. We created a sort of tableau vivant
inside the Royal Galleries [a covered walkway bor-
dered by a row of columns] of the Thermenpaleis,
right on the beach in Ostend, which was a public
performance I think we even organized breakfast
afterwards. The whole event lasted a little over half
an hour and was timed to coincide with the sunrise.
it was a collage of different elements: my own texts,
fiagments of writing by Joseph Conrad, Fernando
Pessoa, Michel de Chelderode, and others, but also
film footage shot by my friend and me, which was
projected on a screen in the background. Everything
was condensed so that it had a theatrical feel. The
performance was explicitly conceptualized to con-
cretize, then disappear again. Feu d'artifice contains
a lot of influences that I feel might provide a radical
way of rethinking my work now.
YVP: Thinking of Feu d'artifce in relation to a shorter
film you made more recently, one you shot of a de-
veloping Polaroid, might it be a medium with
which you'd like to start working again?
LT: The developing Polaroid was more an idea I was making and painting's interference with one an- cause he starts to unravel the whole of German fas-
attracted to on a pragmatic level, to underscore the other becomes too strong, so I couldn't pursue both, cism from a cultural standpoint. A lot of what I was
way an image appears, so I don't really consider it with the two different types of attention they re- thinking about at the time ran parallel to what
a filn piece. It's different. It's more like an object. quire, at the moment. Syberberg was working through in his movies.
Film is of course something that's still in my gut, YVP: There are some obvious relationships between Weiss is an entirely different story. Those works
and maybe that will concretize at some point in a your work and film, but I'm interested in hearing are short films, and there the affinities lie more on
project again, but not in the immediate future, be- more about the role certain concrete cinematogra- the formal level of making images, the often awk-
cause film and painting are hard to combine. Both phers have played in your thinking, and about the ward and impossible angles that are taken, and es-
are very intense, demanding activities. affinities between your work and films by Hans- pecially the way the image is often masked or
YVP: What exactly do you mean by "hard to Jiirgen Syberberg and Peter Weiss. cloaked, even though he's dealing with moving
combine"? LT: Syberberg was someone I encountered in 1978 images. Also how he succeeds in marrying them
LT: Well, they are more or less similar. Some might first by reading the script of Hitler: ein Film aus with a type of immobility-which was already vis-
argue that they are diametrically opposed, since Deutschlond [19771, then seeing the film on three ible in his earlier prints and paintings, of course.
one is a moving image and the other is still, but consecutive nights on television-a black-and You can really see a painter at work there, which is
that's about the only really significant difference. white one if I'm not mistaken. The fascinating also the case with Eraserhead[1977], by David Lynch,
Painting is the process of manufacturing an image, thing about him is the way in which he, in a manner who I wasn't surprised to learn also started out as
of approaching it, and filming is that too. Both are of speaking, dreams history. The way he approached an artist before moving on to film.
unlike making a photograph, where you are in the the war, and in particular Nazism, was very risky YVP: Weiss often makes use of a type of Chinese box
moment. You have much more time when you're for a German at the time. He was the first German system in his works, putting narratives within nar-
considering and approaching an image than you do to imagine what it could mean to step into the mind ratives, which is presumably something you can
with photography, which is why I often say I could of Hitler, without just crudely picturing him. It relate to.
never be a photographer. Because of all this, film- may seem a bit dated now, but it's important be- LT: Yes. It is a way to be able to work on the level of
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as banal sometimes seem more horrific than the which appears to be very difficult when everything
actual horrors you paint. else is becoming increasingly literal; that much is
I reduced precisely because of all those layers of LT: What do you mean by "actual horrors"? clear. But then that's my personal fight in a world
meaning, and also to create sufficient distance from YVP: Body [1990], for instance... that is ever more antiseptic, and in which images
what I wanted to express with painting. Now I've LT: Body is a doll I used to have as a child, which only refer to other images, and the media to the
de-emphasized the gestural brushstroke and tried opens up with a zipper and could be stuffed to give media, and in which my pictures end up in this ter-
not to cultivate a particular style. Of course after a the body volume. So that is not something I would rifying cycle.
good 400 paintings you accumulate something akin classify as horrific. When I first started showing my YVP: Disregarding a type of criticism that refers
to a style, but that is not something you consciously work, many interpreted it as intimate, withdrawn, everything back to you personally, it seems that
aim for. It's more something you need to reduce to introverted, and poetic, none of which it was. Then some of your paintings nonetheless contain a very
the level of habit. That habit is essential, however, there was a period when I was accused of nostalgia, poignant moral critique. I'm thinking of Mwana
essential in its integrity. which was not accurate either, because nostalgia in Kitoko (Beautiful White Man) and the way it was in-
YVP: In that context, does the recurring critique of my eyes is actually truly a notion related to horror. stalled with your other works [in an exhibition of
your work as having a certain style that is said to After that came more perfidious readings, empha- the same title] in the Belgian pavilion at the 2001
function somewhat akin to a"Photoshop filter"-in sizing negative elements-like the sinister, the Venice Biennale.
the sense that it can be applied to any subject, with surgical, the distanced-which again weren't ex- LT: "Mwana Kitoko" was not an exhibition that in-
the effect of equalizing all subjects-particularly planations of the images. tended to point fingers. Because of a confluence of
bother you? The latest critique is that I take a moralizing coincidences, it happened to be shown in the year
LT: It's a very literal critique that stems from igno- stance towards images that have to do with power. of the Lumumba commission [appointed to investi-
rance. I'm someone who takes an extremely long I admit power is something that fascinates me-not gate the direct involvement of the Belgian govern-
time before even starting to paint. The choice of to have power but to look at the apparatus behind ment in the murder in 1961 of Patrice Lumumba,
images, the content of those images, is of essential it, how images could exert power, how they could the first democratically elected prime minister of
importance for me in terms of meaning. Which is have a certain impact-but that's not moralizing, Congo]. About a month after the Biennale closed, at
probably the reason why it may seem I can paint just rather it's an attempt to underscore a of meanings. a concluding ceremony which I was invited to
about anything with relative ease. Now, you can It's never an accusatory, pointed finger. attend, the commission announced that the Belgian
indeed paint anything, so this criticism is already The main, enduring criticism of my work is that government should issue an official apology, which
a tad odd to start with. At the same time, exactly I have by now already said too much about it. What they duly did. The Royal House did not.
because you can make an image about anything, I started as an openness and willingness to accom- For me the whole experience was a very elemen-
am making a choice by painting the things I paint, modate a need for more information has been tary situation of touching on something, bringing
and that choice is always determinant. It deter- turned into a type of pedantic egocentrism on my it to people's attention, and visualizing it in a dif-
mines the way the picture shows itself, and even part. That is the type of retrograde critique that ferent way. That has of course already been done in
pragmatically the way it is concretely made. It's a springs from the inability of some to grant any im- documentaries; there's enough factual material
type of critique that emerges from a consciously in- portance to the work itself, which is of course an dealing with this incident, but there were hardly
flated discourse that juxtaposes new media with a opinion they're more than entitled to. What is not any paintings about it. By transforming it through
very archaic understanding of painting. But that is their right, however, is to narrow all of that into a a painting into an anachronism, the subject became
not my discourse. very personal critique that has nothing to do with aestheticized in a way that drew criticism, from the
YVP: On the contrary, it often feels like paintings my work anymore. French especially, that certain political content
of yours that depict subjects that could be classified It's fair to demand a certain level of abstraction, should not be directly expressed in paintings, which
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but also eventually to the special [tax and legal] Over the past year I've been
status that currently exists for Belgian artists. The working on a project called
NICC's function has now been more or less trans- "Forbidden Empire," which is in
formed into a service -oriented one, but before its two distinct parts: the first was
existence artists in my country were a lot more a more traditional exhibition in
isolated; it played a vital part in breaking that isola- which classical art from the
tion down. southern Low Countries was jux-
Of course I'm not the only artist involved in cu- taposed with old masters from
rating. There are people like Joblle Tuerlinckx, China and hung chronologically,
Michel Francois, Guillaume Bijl, Philip Aguirre, from the 15th century to the 20th. It was shown prospect. I think it's idiotic to try and prospect by
and others who have also taken on that double role here at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, then yourself there as a Westerner. They have to organize
within an experimental framework, not so much traveled to the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City themselves for the show over there, as we will here.
to show that curators are unnecessary, or that art- in Beijing. I believe this was the first time that YVP: In what sense do curatorial projects like this
ists can do these things better, but rather to reac- Chinese old masters and Western old masters(-of one provide you a different way of approaching
tivate dialogue from within the visual field itself. course only from a specific region but still with painting?
An artist will, generally speaking, take a very dif- enormous potential-were shown in relation to LT: First because they allow me to work with objects
ferent approach to curating. Artists work from an- each other. That was a particularly fascinating I didn't produce myself, and second, in this particu-
other kind of modality, with a different vision: starting point for me, because it created a chance lar case, because of the opportunity to work with
usually one that's a lot more oblique and rooted in to reactivate traditional art. old masters, which are stunning in their qualita-
the visual than that of curators, who tend to apply The second part, planned for 2008 and 2009, will tive power and became so as we were able to accrue
concepts in a more literal way. That's the reason be an exhibition that starts from a similar concept meaning across a time span of centuries. When you
why I first started curating. but with contemporary art. As with the first show, recontextualize that differently, it allows you to
The first big project I realized, which I experienced one of the interesting aspects of the project is that look at them in a totally new way. The contemporary
as a truly collaborative curatorial experience, one it's between an enormous country and a tiny one. I stage of the project will of course add to that by de-
which I still feel is valuable, was an exhibition titled will choose 35 Belgian artists, and Ai Weiwei, and veloping discourse between living artists, but work-
"Trouble Spot: Painting" [in 1999, at MuHKA and perhaps another contemporary Chinese artist, will ing from a similar dynamic as the first show in that
N ICc]. My colleague, the artist Narcisse Tordoir, and select 35 artists from China. All the Belgian artists we'll be foregrounding a similar type of questioning
I assembled a fairly big show, including works by 75 will travel to China, and all the Chinese artists will that comes from a very visually oriented premise.
artists, that dealt largely with the interrogation of come here and we'll select the works and create the And that is of great importance for me personally,
painting as a medium. We tried to avoid the tired exhibition out of that dialogue. We'll also be collabo- because I feel that contemporary art is, and always
approach of just placing paintings next to each other, rating with a range of critics, artists, and curators. will be, primarily a process of visualization.
as has been done ad infinitum in the past, reducing YVP: I know you've just come back from one of sev-
painti ng to wallpaper. We wanted to generate a dis- eral recent trips to China, presumably in prepara- Luc Tuymans's work appears in"The PaintingofModern Life,"
course by allowing painting to expand into a wider tion for the show. Were you there mainly to do at the Hayward Gallery,London, from October 4 to December
field, by, for instance, coupling it with installation studio visits? 30. He will be the subject of a major survey at Haus der Kunst,
works that in our eyes are also situated within an LT: No. Although I made some studio visits when I Munich, opening February29, 2008, and a retrospectiveat
expanded notion of the painterly but differently con- was in China, and I got to know a number of artists the Wexner Center for the Arts, in Columbus, Ohio, opening
cretized on a pragmatic level. Those types of juxta- making strong work over there-Zhang Enli and September 20, 2008. For more information on Tuymans, turn
positions turned out to be well received. Yang Zhenzhong in particular-I wasn't there to to Index, p. 110.
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