Luc Tuymans is an illustrated publication accompanying Tate Modern's 2004 exhibition devoted to the influential Belgian painter Luc Tuymans. The exhibition presented works demonstrating Tuymans's distinctive approach to figurative painting and his sustained investigation of history, memory, politics and the circulation of images. Working frequently from photographs, film stills, television images and other existing visual sources, Tuymans transforms apparently ordinary or familiar subjects into restrained paintings characterised by muted colours, cropped compositions and an atmosphere of uncertainty. His seemingly understated images often refer to difficult historical and political subjects, including the Second World War, the Holocaust, Belgian colonialism and the Congo, while other works examine domestic objects, portraits, architecture and fragments of everyday life. Rather than illustrating historical events directly, Tuymans explores how such events are remembered, mediated and represented through images. The resulting paintings question the reliability of visual evidence and the relationship between personal memory and collective history. This concise Tate Modern publication documents an important exhibition in the international career of one of Belgium's most prominent contemporary artists and is particularly relevant to collectors and researchers interested in contemporary painting, Belgian art, conceptual approaches to figurative painting, photography as a source for painting, historical memory and European art around the turn of the twenty-first century.

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Luc Tuymans