Title: Distant toys, dissected bodies and reality TV: Luc Tuymans and painting in the age of ritual and new media

Authors: Christian Mieves

Addresses: School of Arts and Cultures, The Quadrangle, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK

Abstract: This article examines the work of Belgium painter Luc Tuymans (born 1958) and the manner in which his work deals, in particular, with the correlation between photography/film and painting. In order to scrutinise the impact of photography on Tuymans' work, the article makes extensive and critical reference also to Walter Benjamins article 'The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility'. It forms an ideal prism through which to explore Tuymans' work, which in recent years has embraced the new technology and media in paintings. This article further deals with the extent to which the undermining of dualities or binarisms (the pairing of concepts such as inside/out, particular/general or real/imaginary, material/spiritual, etc.) recognisable in European Modernism also thereby questions the binarisms object/representation, and how postmodern painters (and Tuymans in particular) react to this questioning.

Keywords: Luc Tuymans; new media; new technology; Walter Benjamin; ritual; painting; photography; film; postmodern painters.

DOI: 10.1504/IJART.2013.055396

International Journal of Arts and Technology, 2013 Vol.6 No.3, pp.297 - 316

Received: 28 Nov 2011
Accepted: 06 Oct 2012
Published online: 25 Jul 2014 *

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