The image revisited

At the age of 19, Luc Tuymans saw El Greco’s work for the first time – an event which prompted him to embark on his own artistic journey. The life-changing experience is recounted in this publication, which acts as both a monograph and an art history book. It includes three conversations the artist had with art historians Hans Maria De Wolf, Gottfried Böhm, and T.J. Clark over the course of three years. What emerges, besides a fascinating discussion on the work of artists such as El Greco, Goya, Titian, Cézanne, Courbet, Hopper, Newman, and Richter, is an insight into Tuymans’s own creative process, how the great art of the past inspired and motivated him.