“…it is important for me to know exactly what I’m painting, what it is about. Without having that knowledge, it’s impossible for me to start creating an image–I suppose that’s my own limitation.”
Luc Tuymans
“It’s fair to demand a certain level of abstraction, which appears to be very difficult when everything else is becoming increasingly literal; that much is clear. But then that’s my personal fight in a world that is ever more antiseptic, and in which images only refer to other images, and the media to the media, and in which my pictures end up in this terrifying cycle.”
Luc Tuymans
Source: Un-natural Resources. Luc Tuymans on fighting the literal and mistrusting images. Yasmine Van Pee, Modern Painters, 2007.
Bonus: Read this interview between Luc Tuymans and Kerry James Marshall on Bomb magazine.