Intolerance

Belgian painter Luc Tuymans (born 1958), one of the key figures in the 1990s revival of figurative painting, is also one of contemporary art’s great history painters, tackling historical traumas and their representations in a restrained―though resolutely painterly―style and pale, muted palette. Far from accepting painting as obsolete or inadequate, throughout his career Tuymans has used painting to engage with the most painful, urgent subjects of the past and present, from the aftermath of the Second World War and Belgium’s colonial past to the War on Terror. "I still indulge in the perversity of painting," said Tuymans, "which remains interesting." Luc Intolerance , published to accompany a major retrospective at the Qatar Museums in Doha (the artist’s first show in the Gulf region), surveys Tuymans’ work from the past 25 years. Comprehensive and richly illustrated, it contains more than 800 studies, archival material and installation photographs, as well as 60 drawings and 100 paintings (including Tuymans’ new body of work, The Arena , created for the exhibition). Also included are texts by Jan Avgikos, Nicholas Cullinan, Jenevive Nykolak, Nicholas Serota and exhibition curator Lynne Cooke, offering new insights into Tuymans’ oeuvre from the past three decades.