Emulated by scores of younger artists, Luc Tuymans has become arguably the most mfluential European painter of his

generation. On the occasion of a retrospective now on view in Dusseldorf. Jordan Kantor assesses the artist's oeuvre in relation to those of Wilhelm Sasnal, Eberhard Havekost, and Magnus von Plessen-three ofthe most astute painters working in Tuymans's wake.

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TH E TUYMANS EFFECT
uc Tuymans bas been the European painter of '.he momenr+for several yea_rs._ ith a national W
pavilion at the ZOOI Venice Biennale, 3 prominent place in the 2002 Documenra, and" fullinto a particular mode of seeing and depicting thai has unusual reSOI"'U~", Indeed, these day, one carr hardly walk into' gallery or an fair with an eye peeled for painting without see-ing the "Tuymans effect"-the profound, if sometimes illdfahle, way i.1I which the look, subjects, and eve" fundamental painterly approach of Tuyrnans's work has saturated a large and increasingly significant territory. And while the primary hallmarks of'Tuymans' art have been well-rehearsed in the ever-growing literature on the artise+includiug his dis. tinctively crude rendering, his chalky palette and Iimired duomalic range, his use of photographic and filmic sources and cropping techniques, as well as his particular engagement with historical subject marter=che most salieru interpretations
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scale retrospective co-organized by the Tate Modern and Kar Knnsrsamrnlung Nordrhein Westfalcll, Dusseldorf, where ir is now on view, the forty-six-year-old Belgian is. by all a<"Counts,.q midcareer artist in full stride. Yet a slew of top-tier exhibitions does nor fully measure rhe impact of his painting Oil the artistic landscape today. Perhaps even mote revealing is the pervasiveness of different aspects of his art ill rhe work of many yO\Jng~.r European painters. Nor unlike Gerhard Richter two decades ago, Turman. seem. to have tapped

In part because they court formal "failure." Tuymans's paintings have provided a model for young- . artists to plunge into the medium, freed-If only with false confldenoe-from fears of technical inadequacy

out these signature

of Ius art have come Irorn those younger painters who flesh devices in their own work Members of this next generation of painters, including some of Europe's

most promising emerging talents, appear to have Tuymans's spectral oils in mind as they squeeze out blobs of paint, mix up some rurpenrine-heavy medium, and take brush to canvas. One of the strongest readings 0 f T uyrnans's oeuvre has Sasnal, who, perhaps
come from the rhirry-two-ycar-old Polish painter Wilheltn more than any other artist, has inhabited Tuymans's pictorial world and operational approach as a means to forge a distinctively individual body of work. Nut only LD visu aJ terms, btl t also in his relationship to source material an d in his concepcion of his painterly "project," Sasnal 's still-young career call be understood as a kind of working through of the implications of the Tuyrnans model. From a formal perspective, Sasnal's canvases come closest to Tuymans

in overall "look" and painterly touch. This is perhaps most plainly evidenced by the similarities between a canvas like Untitled, 2.oo4-which depicts a standing man in a navy uniform, face blotted out with quick strokes of wet-in to-wet paint-and a work like Tuymans's Himmler, 1998. This kinship stems as much from the essentially monochromatic palette, specific material execution, and nearly equivalent size and scale of the paintings, as it does from the miliraristic subject, the detached lise of anonymous photographic source material, and 9 general menacing air. These works share a very similar pictorial language+one that foregrounds painterly facture and emphasizes speedy execution. (In fact, in almost identical sratem ems, both paimers .have professed to never spending more than a single session on any individual canvas.) For them, a specific kind of representational shorthand reigns supreme; A group of wonky brushstrokes can stand for

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"face," while abstract, almost formless blotches read as "hands" At first this pictorial shorthand might be explained as a simple consequence of working from photographs, which already reduce a three-dimensional scene to a flat constellation of dark and light shapes. Yet by divorcing the painterly [Ouch from the mimetic task alone-and undermining the very idea of technical expertise by highlighting "clumsy" brushworkTuyrnans has pointed toward new ways of working from photographic sources that do nor rely 011 dated or ideologically Iaden ideas of craft and skill. In part because they so obviously court formal "failure" in this way, Tuymans's paintings have provided a model and encouragement for younger artists to plunge liberally into the medium, freed-even if only with false confidence+from fears of technical inadequacy.

tackle subjects like the Holocaust that seem to refuse rcprcsentarion. (Not incidentally, Sasnal, too, has addressed this topic in a group of canvases from 2003 iIU10CLlO,Lsly entitled "Forest, ") This perverse attempt to "picture the unpicrureable" (to bOLTOW a hackneyed phrase from the Tuymans literature) has ironically proved immensely fruitful for many contemporary painters, as Sasnal's A-Bomb, 2003, demonstrates. A completely illegible image comprised of a white center surrounded by yellow, sruccolike paint that recalls Robert Ryman, A-Bomb only "depicts" an atomic explosion by inference. This painting, like Tuymans's seminal canvas Gas Chamber, 1.986, capitalizes 0.11 the frisson+and disconnect-between an almost arbitrary image and all incendiary title. Knowledge of the title not only provides an occasion to look back into the painting with a completely different set of eyes, but also literalizes the limits of the medium and representation more generally.' By signaling through its tide that a work has failed to represent what it intends, these artists grant themselves space to pursue painting based on an inherent and necessary incompleteness. This concept of painting's "incompleteness" is further developed by Tuyrnans and YOlmger artists via their deliberate use of vastly different painterly idioms within their respective oeuvres. By nimbly switching from one pictorial mode to another-for example, by painting illusionistically at one moment and diagrammatically the next=these artists demonstrate a flexibility and range that fly in the face of a single autographic style. TIllS effect is evident even in the canvases of painters whose work might not immediately recall Tuymans and Kai Althoff But Sasnal develops this aspect of Tuymans most dramatically, as a quick

Of course, neither Tuyrnans nor Sasnal actually fails or paints badly. To the contrary, it is partly the way their canvases coalesce despite such a restrictive painterly language that makes them compelling. However, both painters do deploy the aesthetic of technical failure as a way to thernatizc the situation of painting today, a predicament in which the very possibility of the autonomous, or even complete work, has been discredited by three decades nf postrnodern critique.I lndeed, painting may he thriving now in part because it was so thoroughly undermined for so many years. The idea that painting was somehow bound to fail-a presupposition that finds formal expression in the now-preva lent "deskilled" aestheticis also worked through in deeper conceptual terms in the canvases of Tuymans and those in his wake. That is, beyond using technique to thernarize failure, these artists set tasks and projects for themselves that seem doomed from the beginning. Tuyrnans for example, has built his career on an attempt to

visually, such as Lucy McKenzie

of his Widlik,
2002,

comparison

with Tuymans's

Writing, 1988,

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167

indicates, In both of these works, the notion of naturalistic (photographic) depiction has yielded to a more Iiaguisric kind of space, akin to the written page. They thereby evoke rhe shift from the realm of nature ro culture that Lco Steinberg pointedly described in his 1968 formulation of the "flatbed picture plane." Tuyrnans's semiotic strategy of choosing a particular pictorial language based on the specific subject and internal needs of all image is one of the most powerful ways in which he has pointed a path beyond a certain kind of photographically based painting. Thi is a very different approach than, say, that of Richter, who grinds diverse images down to exactly the arne consistency, spewing out paintings, which, though undeniably ravishing and important, all partake of the same smoothed and blurry pictorial language. Quite simply, without the kind of spac~ that Tuymans opened fur painting, it is almost Inconceivable that a canvas like Sasnal's Widlil~ could sit comfortably within" stream of production [hat also includes such disparate works as his A-Bomb and Untitled.

Yet for all their stylistic inconsistency and diversity of motifs, Sasnal's paintings are nevertheless bound to one another by dearly defined "interests" or "projects." By adopting a network of concerns=which may be germane only to a single series of works or JUSt one exhibinon+Sasnal can jusrify the connection of works that 011 the surface may not seem intrinsically connected. For example, a timely Or sexy rubric, such as nostalgia for discredited utopianism allows Sasnal to join paintings of the Concorde, I970S Eastern bloc book covers, and Robert Smithson all under a loosely theruatic umbrella, despite their radics lly different styles. Indeed, even beyond the strong visual impact Tuymans has had on a younger generation of painters, this strategy is one of the Belgian's foremost legacies. Trailblazing the thematic exhibition with series that announce themselves to be "about" African colonialism or xenophobic nationalism, Tuyrnans has opened the door for myriad painting projects that rely, in the words of one of his chief proponents, Ulrich Loock, on

By making individual paintings part of a larger whole III which backstory informs interpretation,

these artists present fragmented visions that thernatlze their ineluctable contingenc

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ARTfORu'hIi

Oppostte page, left: Eberhard Hilvekost, Foca, 2002, oll on eaneas. ·31t'4I . 21~·.I1lghl.: lu" Tuymanl. x Thls pa&¢. le:"tt:luc TU),Rl.an:irDerD/sgnfJfitlsche Dllel-: JV(The
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19'!:!2.,orion canvas, 22~.i( 15". Rig1rt: Eberhard Havekost, SymlJi]thfe (~/S}.1.999. oil on canvas, l._1~ ~ 9~".

"extra-painterly discourse" for justificarion.! Ultimately, this is what makes Tuyrnans's fundamental strategy so flexible, and so relevant to younger painters. Now, to prepare for an exhibition artists need not invent an entire pictorial universe but simply insert Wl interest and go. Perhaps this formulation sounds less charitable [han it should. While some might criticize this "extra-painterly discourse" as a crutch (and claim rhar Tuymans masterfully plugs into hot-button issues and unassailably "important" subjects), one could conversely view his engagement with subject matrer as a further means by which [0 grapple with the dilemma of postmodem painting. For, much like the lack of formal resolution or coherent style, this extrinsic relationship to subject matter can be understood as a commentary on (or symptom of) painting's fai lure to provide, a coherent worldview. By making individual paintings parr of a larger whole ill which backs lory informs interpretation, these artists presen t fragmented visions that themarizc their ineluctable contingency. [f Sa~nal's art can be read through Tuyrnans in such general strategic terms, rhirry-seven-year-old German painter Eberhard Havekosr's relationship [Q the senior figure has more to do with the nuts and bolts of painting. Early canvases like Lokalisieren 2 T99B, and those from the series "Symparhie," L999, for example, are very similar in pictorial construction to those of Tuymans, and nor simply because he employs photographic subject matter in many of the same ways. Instead, their affinity is strongest at the level of technique and form, especially in their straightforward compositions and paint-handling and

their aggressive engagement of the viewer, In Lokatlsiere« 2, a single male figure squints as he points a gun scope at us while in Sympathie (2.15)a woman with pinup crimson lips hulks forward, as if lurching out of the frame. The directness of these pictures is indebted not jL1Sl to Havekost's radical cropping but to d1C very specific ways in which he applies paint to canvas, Here, as he typically does, Havekost has laid in relatively large, flar, opaque areas of solvent-rich paint to creme a shallow pictorial space. With very limited painterly incident and no gloss, these matte, uumodulared planes of color+like the background in Lokalisieren 2., or the face in Sympathil! (zl5)read as congruent with the surface of the canvas, severely constricting representational depth. Havekosr's technique of pa.i(1ring wet into wet, brushing new layers onto the canvas before previous ones have dried, not only contributes to these paintings' sense of "speed" and even immanence, bur it also unifies the colors and tones in the image, flattening it further. Beyond their compositional and painterly directness, Havekost and Tuymans are arguably closest in their technical reliance OJ] a very narrow range of color and value, Both artists typically use only a couple of colors in a single canvas, mixing them with white and black to create highlights {tints} arid shadows (shades) ill a constricred spectrum berwccn lighr and dark. A comparison of Havekosr's Sympathie (215) with Tuymans's Der Diagnostische Blick IV {The Diagnostic View IVl, .1992, reveals-beyond an uncanny compositional similarity+how dose these two artists' approaches to color and value actually are. In both canvases, a single earth tone-+ochre, umber, or
NOVEM BER .OOA 189

sienna-is mixed with a large amount of white to create the dominant, essentially monochromatic, area of the painting. By adding hits of black to this mix (which because it is painted before the underlayers dry, tends to have a feathered edge), the a rtisr renders forms like noses, eye socke IS, and cheekbones, while staying within the established color family. The minute tonal differenriarion chat results gives these faces their pasty complexions and further flattens the claustrophobic space ill the paintings. This process imbues these images with the deadened, interior illumination and haunting mood that have become one of Tuymans's most emulated hallmarks. Through this extreme cropping and restricted tonal range, Tuyrnans and Havekosr bring their imagery to the very edge of illegibility, as, (or example, in the former's St. Valentine, £994, and the latter's Face, 2002 ..These artists make everyday objects straJ1ge, thereby raising fundamental questions about the nature of perception. Indeed, in a general way, they are both concerned with how particular formal devices call trigger broader thematic meanings, specifically with regard to the mediation of the image and of vision itself. If Tuyrnans is concerned wirh a kind of culnnal vision, borne out through his use of public imagery, Havekost is much more inwardly oriented, choosing more personal source material. His most recent work seems to have become more private, often based on family photographs rather than on the found images that caused his early work to bring Tuyrnans so forcefully to mind. While Havekosr reprises aspects of Tuyrnans's compositional and painterly means, another thirty-seven-year-old

Magnus von Plessen, has a more metaphysical the Belgian, His an and Tuymans's share less a specific "look" than a particular model of visuality based on pictorial ambiguity. By reducing photographic sources to oddly skeletal silhouettes, von Plessen treads a thin line between abstraction and figuratio[l, or, perhaps more precisely, between generality and specificity. His works turn on a dialectic between the mark and its meaning that is closely related to T uyrnans's concept of picturing the unpictureable. This somewhat intangible program is often literalized on the level of subject matter" For example, while paintings of rnirro rs are as old as self-conscious art, von Plesscn's contribution to the genre, Dime Titel (Spiegel) (Untitled [Mirrorj), 200~, specifically relates to Tuyrnans's

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signature play between absence and presence in its refusal to reflection (compare it with Tuymans's 1992 canvas Sf)iegei I [Mirror fJ).4 In von Plessen's painting, a huge white blob at the center of the irn age obscures the reflection of the
depict small figure on the stairway. hot spot it creates That hlol,-which does not so relates
to

mud, represent the way a camera's flash is seen as index the

in a photograph+specifically Tuyrnans's painterly play between seeing and hiding. Looking for his OWtl shadow in the mirror, the painter searches for a new way to work beyond the now century-old preoccupation wid, photographically mediated vision. And thus the specific thematic and formal means by which Tuymans both acknowledges and refuses photography for painting have dearly charted a new direction for many young artists
to

follow.

Reducing photographic sources to oddly skeletal silhouettes, Magnus von Plessen treads a thin lin ~ between abstraction and figuration, or. perhaps more precisely. between generality and specificity.

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ln von Plessen's work, it in rhar of Sasnal and Havckost, this duality of acceptance and refusal is intricately bou nd up with painterly technique. The visual signature of von Plesseu's paintings is his ubiquitous paint "bar,' which functions as his fundamental pictorial unit. Tills bar, which cousntures all the marks in a typical work like Fe1idty, 2.O0l, is made one of r.'NO ways-either addinvely by applying paint with a flat-headed brush or subrractively through scraping a palette knife of nearidenrical width. Although apparently singular, tbe bar loudly announces the back and forth of positive and negative markmaking in the picture, and is clearly of a piece with Tuyman 's obdurate brushwork (compare .Felicity with Himmler). VOIl Plcssen's overt facture and conception of painting as an agglomeration of individual units relates to T uymans's strategy of foregroundiug [he material substance of paint at the expense of mimesis, and reveals a truly shared interest with regard ro the balance between imagistic ambiguity and painterly literalism. This oscillation between positive and negative mark making has another formal effect that provides a final point of comparison between Tuymans and von Plessen, because it creates a specific kind of pictorial space. For example, in both von Plesscn's RI1IIfI'l (Room), 1002., and Tuyrnans's A ntichambre, 1985. the primary visual tension in [he picture is between the depiction of deep space through the use of perspecti val rendering and the refusal of that space by the overt display of irs painterly construction. Von Plessen pu hes [hat ab traction even further than T uymans, creating an almost completely Illegible image. Whilc this tension may nor be new to painting, there is something novel and particular in von

Plessen's blithe graphic display of a painted mark that has a diagrammatic qU8Llry yet still manages to represent illusionistically, The tension inherent in this formal dialectic selves as II neat analogue for many of the painterly and conceptual concerns at the heart of TUY1l13ns's art and thai of other figures working in a similar vein. What ultimately connecrs these artists is nor simply a formal look or strategy but the intensity with which rhey simultaneously accept and deny painting. Sasnal, Hsvekost, and von Plessen are but three exemplary representatives in tb is cause, and, of COLLl':SC,readi ng them through T uymans is just one way to approach their diverse production, Bur this concern, which is intimately connected with forging yet another new path for painting through photography, is specific and resolute. While acknowledging painting's absolute cOl1tingency, these artists push rhe medium forward with a unique admixture of skepticism and faith, and that may be the only conviction that they+or we+-can have. D
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