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Luc Tuymans' Still Life and the monstration of 9/11

This article presents a reading of Luc Tuymans’ large Still Life of 2002 as a critique of the politics of representation. First shown at Documenta 11, the painting confounded public expectations. Tuymans had been widely expected to use the exhibition to address the terrorist attacks of 11th September 2001; the painting was read as a calculated refusal of such expectations. I argue that Still Life does address the spectacle of 9/11, but in a more subtle fashion than has heretofore been appreciated. The painting plays upon Tuymans' signature themes of trauma, violence, history, and visibility to reassess the historical role of art, and the genre of still life in particular, in sublimating the violence of colonialism. As such, it employs a logic of monstration which problematises the relationship between visibility and invisibility, looking-at and looking-away.