Retrospective is no greatest hits; some of the Flemish artist's most striking images are not here. But that's no handicap, since the show proves that some of his lesser-known work is as good as the rest. Furthermore, with just over 70 paintings, Retrospective is also no cornucopia. And that's a good thing, too: The paintings don't hang too close to each other.
On the other hand, they are close enough to each other to communicate. And they do, amply. You constantly see echoes between different paintings, even if they've been painted in different time periods.
Tuymans has been coined a conceptual painter: his work adds an extra dimension if you know the ideas that inspired them. For a few decades now, he has been working in series. His most famous was Mwana Kitoko: Beautiful White Man - the Belgian entry to the Venice Biennale in 2001 - about the decolonisation of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Presented in its entirety, Mwana forms the backbone of Retrospective, together with two other reconstituted series (the individual paintings are spread all over the world and had to be tracked down): Proper, about post-9/11 America with an amazing Condoleezza Rice portrait called "The Secretary of State" and At Random, a collection of, at first glance, arbitrary accumulated images.
Despite the intellectual basis on which Tuymans' work is grounded - other paintings are lifted from series about, for instance, Jesuits, the Walt Disney Company and Nazi architect Albert Speer - I must admit that years ago I fell in love with his work for its pictorial qualities.
The unkempt compositions, the familiar yet uncanny motifs and subjects and, first and foremost, the colours. It's tempting to say actually the lack of colour, since Tuymans is known for faded tones, with loads of black, brown, gray, beige and white. Even when he uses yellow or red they're drained of their most intense pigments. This way the works exude a deep melancholy, sometimes even sadness.
Of course you can always try to crack the code - the title of the painting might help, although not always. But I have the impression that Tuymans, who, even with two curators at hand, held the reins of this exhibition, wants to adjust his image of conceptual painter.
He didn't want an audio guide that could give background information, and the explanations on the walls of Bozar are kept minimal. Of course, ideally you admire his work on different levels. But if push comes to shove, I prefer Tuymans the painter to Tuymans the thinker. However blasphemous that may sound.
Pictured: "Reconstruction", part of the Tuymans' series Mwana Kitoko: Beautiful White Ma
Disappointments
Retrospective includes a compilation of moving images from the first half of the 1980s, when Tuymans had quit painting in favour of filmmaking (on film stock, not on video!). It's a first that Tuymans is putting them in a show, but this is where the exhibition does lack some background information. It's just a stream of images with nothing for the visitor to grasp.
Most books on Tuymans prove it's difficult to catch his colours in print. But the Retrospective catalogue beats them all, sadly. With colour being so important, I sometimes have the impression of looking at new works. An achievement in itself, of course.
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