Proper

Proper is an exhibition catalogue of Luc Tuymans paintings, continuing the artist's practice of working from found photographic sources toward flat, muted canvases.

Published in 2005, the book reproduces the paintings from the exhibition alongside the source images and short critical texts, following Tuymans's method of translating a single photograph into a painting in one deliberate, largely unrevised session. The result is a body of work that looks documentary at a glance but withholds the context needed to read it that way.

The catalogue belongs to the wide run of exhibition publications that have followed Tuymans through galleries and museums since the 1990s, documenting a single show rather than surveying his full career.