Nov 22, 2010
This week: Duncan and Richard talk to art superstar Luc Tuymans!
The following is shamelessly lifted from the MCA site:
Luc Tuymans (Belgian, b. 1958) is considered one of the most
significant European painters of his generation and he has been an
enduring influence on younger and emerging artists. Born and raised
in Antwerp, where he lives and works, Tuymans is an inheritor to
the vast tradition of Northern European painting. At the same time,
as a child of the 1950s, his relationship to the medium is
understandably influenced by photography, television, and
cinema.
Interested in the lingering effects of World War II on the lives of
Europeans, Tuymans explores issues of history and memory, as well
as the relationship between photography and painting, using a muted
palette to create canvases that are simultaneously withholding and
disarmingly stark. Drawing on imagery from photography, television,
and film, his distinctive compositions make ingenious use of
cropping, close-ups, framing, and Luc Tuymans sequencing, offering
fresh perspectives on the medium of painting, as well as larger
cultural issues.
The artist's more recent work approaches the post-colonial
situation in the Congo and the dramatic turn of world events after
9/11. These series have led Tuymans to a sustained investigation of
the realms of the pathological and the conspiratorial.