Investigation into Luc Tuymans
Drawing has been integral to Tuymans’ artistic practice from the start. Sketches, watercolours and other small-scale works form the bedrock of his work for they constitute, for him, a way of thinking through an idea. Important features of Tuymans’ artistic approach can be found in these preparatory pieces such as his voluntary choice of low-quality materials and his incorporation of found elements. Such works are both visual preparations for later paintings and exteriorisations of thought processes. As Tuymans said in an interview with Josef Helfenstein in 1997: ‘drawing is particularly important because I become mentally involved in the work and the picture’.
‘What is important for me is the idea of thinking while I draw, particularly in the tiny drawings. It helps to have everything under control’.
Elsewhere in the interview, Tuymans explained that he mostly draws from memory and that he finds it better not to start drawing immediately when he sees something, but that he draws ‘on the basis of a fragmentary memory.’ This is elaborated on later in the 1997 interview with Helfenstein, when he describes how he usually prefers to draw after seeing something, ‘on the basis of a fragmentary memory’. Each drawing is more than a visual record: it forms part of a wider reflective process. The first comprehensive exhibition of Tuymans’ drawings and other works on paper from the years 1975–96 was on view in an exhibition that travelled to Kunsthalle Bern, Bern; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley; and Capc Musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux (in 1997–98).
The Antwerp Connection
Luc Tuymans was born in Mortsel close to the city of Antwerp on 14 June 1958. His father was Belgian Flemish and his mother was Dutch. During World War II his mother’s family joined the Dutch Resistance and hid refugees, whereas some members of his father’s family allegedly had sympathised with Nazi ideology. This fact echoed through family conversations, raising moral questions and feelings of guilt, and the subject became a source of fascination and fear, later playing a key role in Tuymans’ painting.