{"id":1287,"date":"2009-11-17T13:24:24","date_gmt":"2009-11-17T21:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2009\/11\/luc_tuymans_-_criticism_of_a_b\/"},"modified":"2009-11-17T13:24:24","modified_gmt":"2009-11-17T21:24:24","slug":"luc_tuymans_-_criticism_of_a_b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2009\/11\/luc_tuymans_-_criticism_of_a_b.html","title":{"rendered":"Luc Tuymans – criticism of a blank"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the anything-goes, free-form era of contemporary criticism, only those whose tenure is guaranteed can dare to be dull. They write to keep a well-fed hand in. Others tap dance. They’re as good as their clicks. Dull used to be the critical norm. Few long for a return to those days, but back then, attention came to critics who articulated a rigorous set of ideas, not necessarily a snappy approach to the sentence. <\/p>\n

Personally, I’m all about snappy. And instead of possessing concepts which I bring to bear on the art, I respond to the ideas in the art. Paul Valery<\/a> called it the equivalent of playing a card game whose rules change with every hand.  <\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, that approach is generational. I started at the tail end of the anti-Clement Greenberg<\/a> era and never left. (Marat\/Sade<\/i><\/a>: We’re all normal and we want our freedom.<\/i>) But there are limits. No, there aren’t, but there should be. Critics who free associate in front of an artwork aren’t critics. They’re flying kites in their heads. They’re taking a test for a psychology course. <\/p>\n

Few artists attract as much snap, crackle and pop nonsense as Luc Tuymans. His paintings are slippery blanks, unpleasantly representational without being dark. His moments are worth missing yet there they are, the thin-lipped equivalents of gray days.<\/p>\n

The Secretary of State<\/i> 2005
\noil on canvas, 18 x 24-1\/4 inches David Zwirner Gallery<\/a><\/p>\n

\"LucTuymanscondi.jpg\"The image above is perfectly transportable. Seeing it reproduced online is not significantly different from seeing it in person, which is, of course, remarkable for an oil painting. Note the tooth and the Buddha ear. The tooth on the left is like one slightly-longer table leg tipping the balance out of true. The long earlobe? Not in this case an old-soul signifier. <\/p>\n

Pigeons<\/i>
\n2001, oil on canvas
\n128 x 156cm (Image via<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"LucTuymanPigeon.jpg\"Exhibit A, part of an essay<\/a> on Tuymans from the online Saatchi Gallery:<\/p>\n

Luc Tuymans’s pigeons bop in dumb disarray. Dirty and disease-ridden, they’re a strangely curious mob, a metaphoric stand-in for ourselves. Painted in the muted tones of history, Luc Tuymans offers a chilling ultimate truth about humankind. He makes a cold comedy of a terrifying thought.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Dumb disrray<\/i>? Who you calling dumb? Real life street pigeons can, when motivated by food, easily learn to tell the difference between Van Gogh and Chagall. (Abstract here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Dirty and disease-ridden<\/i>? Not these pigeons. They’re color inflections on canvas. In their price range, believe me they’re cared for.<\/p>\n

Muted tones of history<\/i>? What? Stand-ins for ourselves<\/i>? Says who? Chilling ultimate truth<\/i>? Cold comedy<\/i>? Come on. <\/p>\n

Even the great Peter Schjeldahl flails around for meaning in his (as always) richly entertaining essay<\/a> on Tuymans in The New Yorker<\/i>. Schjeldahl claims Tuyman’s work dramatizes the fallen state of painting since the 1960s<\/i>. If anything, it dramatizes the reverse, that you don’t have to be an angel to dance upon the head of a pin as the audience swells around you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the anything-goes, free-form era of contemporary criticism, only those whose tenure is guaranteed can dare to be dull. They write to keep a well-fed hand in. Others tap dance. They’re as good as their clicks. Dull used to be the critical norm. Few long for a return to those days, but back then, attention […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1287","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}