Untitled
Luc Tuymans
Belgian, born 1958
1997
A small mixed-media drawing—gouache and pencil with a cut-and-pasted acrylic sheet on paper—in which Tuymans deliberately simplifies and blurs a human form to evoke the sensation of memory or a photographic residue rather than a clear likeness.
A flat, chartreuse field at first fills the eye, then a ghostly, smeared silhouette of a seated figure emerges from translucent washes and soft, dissolving edges so the image seems to hover between appearance and disappearance.
This restrained, washed-out handling exemplifies Tuymans’s contribution to contemporary painting—using reduction, mediated surfaces, and color restraint to make visible the instability of memory, images, and historical witnessing.
Medium
Gouache and pencil with cut-and-pasted acrylic sheet on paper on board
Dimensions
10 1/8 x 6 5/8" (25.7 x 16.8 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection Gift
Accession
3302.2005
Palette
Exhibitions
