Niks

Luc Tuymans’s quiet, elegiac paintings, copied from images of old photographs or newspaper illustrations, draw upon the act of remembrance and the function of collective memory. The artist once said, “I usually finish [a painting] in a single day, partly in order not to lose my concentration and partly in order to have the chance not to come too close to the image I am using as my model.” His palette—composed usually of flat, muted greens, browns, grays, and white—likewise evokes forgotten, lost events and people. Niks, which in Flemish means “nothing,” conveys little of the poignancy and delicate sentiment of a traditional floral still life; instead, this pot of geraniums acridly suggests a faded sense of middle-class banality in lieu of the elegant, sumptuous arrangements celebrated by the Northern European painters of the past.