Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at David Zwirner of new work by Luc Tuymans made during lockdown. Most of these works were sketches, many done when Tymans was unable to get to his studio. They did give a sense of someone getting back to their creative roots in lockdown. The core of the show was a painted animation featuring two monkeys including a toy one from his childhood alongside sketches for its production. I loved some of the delicate drawings including a sketch of a Holbein portrait and a wonderful picture of a tulip. My favourite was the street seen shown here with the symbol for a video on the top which makes you want to touch it and watch it move. It will be interesting to see what develops from these spontaneous works in the future. Closes 22 May 2021

Weird but fascinating exhibition at the Royal Academy of the work of the James Ensor curated by the contemporary artist Luc Tuymans. I liked the opening section which looked at his early life in Ostend and how this affected his later work. Some of his family ran a curio shop selling seaside souvenirs and carnival objects such as masks. He also witnessed the disinterment of mass graves from the Siege of Ostend in the early 17th century to make way for building work so he would have been used to the site of skeletons. All of this helped to explain his strange later art focusing on masks and skeletons which seemed to come from nowhere. Some of the early work reminded me of Sickert as it was a bit muddy brown in colour and atmosphere. I liked his visceral still lives such as “The Skate” from 1892. I also liked the mix of the ordinary and weird in his work. In one beautiful picture on an interior, possibly a studio, you suddenly reason the figure on the chair is a skeleton look...