On February 6 a major exhibition of the work of the Flemish painter Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) opened at the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It's the first US retrospective for the artist and the most comprehensive presentation of his work to date, with approximately 75 key paintings from 1985 to the present.
Tuymans is currently one of the most highly valued Flemish painters, an appreciation which has grown beyond the borders of his native Belgium over the last couple of years. This retrospective was already on show at the Wexner Center Galleries in Columbus, OH at the end of last year, and on that occasion Peter Schjeldahl described the artist as "the most challenging painter in the recent history of art" in The New Yorker.
As noted in an article in our yearbook The Low Countries, Adrian Searle once wrote that Tuymans "examines the malaise of European culture". Or as the SFMOMA press release reads: "Tuymans's paintings initially suggest relatively innocuous depictions of everyday life - but other meanings almost always lurk beneath their surfaces." Ominous and not to be taken at face value.
The exhibition at SFMOMA runs until May 2, 2010.
[Illustration: Luc Tuymans, The Secretary of State, 2005; oil on canvas; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, promised gift of David and Monica Zwirner, 2006; © Luc Tuymans; photo: courtesy David Zwirner, New York]
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