Luc Tuymans: Mwana Kitoko.(Brief Article)

"Luc Tuymans: Mwana Kitoko" at David Zwirner, New York. November 23-December 23, 2000

One of the less remarked-upon artistic phenomena of the last decade or so is the way the recent vogue for painting from photographs has ushered in a mini-era of narrative painting. As soon as the viewer becomes aware that a given work is a painting of a photograph, his attention is necessarily directed to the story and away from the paint, perceptions, and aesthetic concerns of the artist. The Belgian painter Luc Tuymans stands at the forefront of a younger generation of representational artists, almost all of whom paint photographs, magazine clippings, film stills, and images from television. "Mwana Kitoko" Tuymans's recent show at Zwirner, brought together ten works using images from the history of Belgian colonialism in the Congo. Meaning "beautiful boy" "mwana kitoko" is the nickname the Congolese gave to King Baudouin during his 1955 triumphal procession through the country.

Previously, Tuymans has not tended to paint historical or politically charged subjects; he has generally focused on images of people or landscapes. Still, the canvases in "Mwana Kitoko" have the same overexposed or washed-out and watery look of his previous efforts. And, because the images in the show are all taken from film stills and other archival material, they seem distanced and unimpassioned, their political content muted. They bear no relationship to the political romanticism of a Delacroix or to the officially sanctioned politics of a neoclassical painter such as David. In fact, Tuymans's attitude toward his subject matter remains ambiguous, and the cool irony with which he treats his subjects so alienates the viewer from any aesthetic or political engagement with the work that it leaves one wondering why the artist bothered to paint them at all. Mwana Kitoko (2000) depicts the young Belgian king in a white military uniform getting off the plane on his arrival in the Belgian Congo. He wears sunglasses, but his facial features are otherwise ...