Dept. of Figurative Art: Luc Tuymans and Kerry James Marshall at Harvard

A standing room only crowd of asymmetrical hair cuts and ironic duck-hunting hats turned out last night at Harvard's Barker Center to watch artists Luc Tuymans and Kerry James Marshall debate problems of representation and the trauma of history.

Belgian painter Tuymans, known for his washed-out paintings of gas chambers, Disneyland and Condoleezza Rice, among others, spoke about why he's smarter than you. Declaring his talk "Luc Tuymans for Dummies," he discussed paintings that address the inadequacy of memory and the rise of a "regressive and defensive form of conservatism."

If Tuymans was hawk-like in his skinny black suit, Kerry James Marshall was bearish, a bulk wrapped in a blue turtleneck. As a dominant African-American artist, he talked about the need to put black faces in the center of his work. Ironic/pornographic paintings of black women and of America's first slave, John Punch, in deep, saturated color, were beautiful and unsettling.

If Tuymans had too much history, with the violence of twentieth-century Europe hanging over his head, Marshall considered his work a response to an "absence of history." Blacks haven't been opposed as much as forgotten, a void more than an enemy. In the end though, both artists could agree that things were pretty much hopeless all around.

A discussion that occasionally veered toward real confrontation was probably best summed up in the end by Tuymans who showed his painting of a despondent man, "staring at something, but at what, I have no fucking idea."

The New Art/New Artists series at Harvard continues on April 30th with a talk by Phil Collins (the video artist, not the guy from Genesis).

Post contributed by Arlo Crawford.