Luc Tuymans Quotes & Sayings

If you ask people to remember a painting and a photograph, their description of the photograph is far more accurate than that of the painting. Strangely enough, there is a physical element intertwined with the painting. It shakes loose an emotional element within the viewer. — Luc Tuymans

All art is failure. How one fails is a different matter. — Luc Tuymans

When I start to paint, it is real agony. I get nervous. The day before, I am already working up to it. Then I get to the studio and, once the image starts to emerge and come together, pleasure kicks in. And then you can see things that no other person can see. — Luc Tuymans

Painted time is a different zone. This is why I don't believe that a painting - although I've been accused of it many times now - can be truly topical. A painting's physicality gives it a different persistence and a different perception. — Luc Tuymans

When you feel concentrated within the intensity of making paintings, you know exactly what you are doing. — Luc Tuymans

Life is politics, basically, but you don't just go to a gallery and put the words 'art' and 'politics' on the wall. — Luc Tuymans

An artwork should point in more than one direction, not be this sort of placating, self-demonstrating, witnessing element. — Luc Tuymans

It is not important to convince people; they should convince themselves, they should look with their own eyes. — Luc Tuymans

Every painting has a weakness and a breaking point, where the essence of a painting lies. In my case it is never in the centre. — Luc Tuymans

When critics or art historians or curators ask me why I still paint, the answer is that I am not naive. — Luc Tuymans