Untitled from The Temple
Luc Tuymans
Belgian, born 1958
1996
An aquatint in which Luc Tuymans pairs a dense black rectangle above a faint, washed field that reads like a blurred interior, using restraint to evoke absence and uncertain memory.
What first hits you is the abrupt matte black block set against a lower pale rectangle whose ghostly smudges and soft, receding hints of perspective make the space feel like a half-erased corridor.
By translating his subdued, memory-haunted imagery into aquatint, Tuymans helped expand contemporary printmaking’s capacity to suggest historical unease, erasure, and the moral ambiguity of representation.
Medium
One from a portfolio of eight aquatints
Dimensions
plate: 20 3/8 × 14 5/8" (51.8 × 37.1 cm); sheet: 31 1/2 × 23 3/4" (80 × 60.3 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
The Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Endowment
Accession
701.2015.1
Palette
Exhibitions