Luc Tuymans

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although it fails to convey the reflective quality of the copper background in the original. Condition: This work is in very good and original condition.
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Courtesy of the artist.

“As in any good detective story, Tuymans’ painterly clues function as indexical signs – physical traces of what previously transpired, indicators of things past that serve to activate the narrative.” (Nancy Spector, ‘The Unforgiving Trace’, Luc Tuymans, London 1996, p. 100). The Barrel confronts us with exactly that – clues to a past narrative that nonetheless remain profoundly ambiguous, as indeed do the subjects in Luc Tuymans’ enigmatic paintings at large. In his radical renunciation of the hierarchy of subjects, the artist’s work can either be highly political or incredibly mundane – and even though a sense of urgent narrative is often suggested, the differentiation between these categories remains unclear.

Whilst this breakdown of hierarchical subject-matter is augmented through the blurred aesthetic that has become Tuymans’ iconic  style, his idiosyncratic handling of the medium also invokes his interest in film, which is a central concern in The Barrel. Not only is the sense of an evolving narrative explicitly suggested through the presentation of the work as a triptych, in which each image captures the same setting from constantly shifting angles, but film is indeed also the subject-matter of the work, emphasised through the changing perspectives on the dramatic rock constellations in the background of each copper plate. Painted after three film stills from Pathé’s first hand-coloured film reel from 1904, titled A new way of travelling, Tuymans directly engages with a historical film in which two Chinese men convince a woman to go travelling in a mysterious barrel, after which the piece is named.

Despite the painterly nature of his work, film is indeed at the heart of the artist’s celebrated practice.  As he explains: "for an artist like Gerhard Richter, the fight of true painting against photography was very important; for me, it's much more interesting to think of films, because on a psychological level, films are more decisive" (the artist in: Juan Vicente Aliaga and Luc Tuymans, Interview in: Ulrich Look et al., Luc Tuymans, London 2004, p. 12). Whilst the influence of film is magnificently captured in the present work, both in the subject and through its formal presentation as a triptych, the captivating three-partite painting is also an outstanding example of Luc Tuymans’ distinguished oeuvre. Characterised by his unique chromatic palette, favouring paler colours that infuse his work with a distinctively recognisable appearance that invokes the look of older films, The Barrel is an iconic work by Tuymans in every sense.