Giscard and more art by Luc Tuymans

(Gift Print, 2012)

Giscard depicts Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the French Socialist President (1974–1981). In this close-cropped composition based on a news photograph, a skull-like head wearing headphones listens intently to simultaneous translation at a meeting considering whether to admit Turkey to the European Union. One of the most influential contemporary painters of the past two decades, Tuymans uses a characteristic palette of mouldy grays, smeared brush strokes, and mediated imagery taken from photographs, film, and the Internet. He deploys these formal elements to explore memory, history, power, and paranoia.