LLC Tuymans

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16 Miles found the money quote [heh] about his upcoming US retrospective in Luc Tuymans’ TAN interview : “The US tour should lead to steady sales.”
But wait, there’s more! That guy has had it up to _here_ with American slowness in gettin’ on board the Tuymans train:

TAN: Are you happy with the selection of works for your US tour?
LT: Yes, it’s taken a long time for a US institution to ask me to do a show. There are 76 works. [Ed.: Exactly how long is a long time, Luc?] I’ve installed all 80 of my solo shows myself. This is the first time I can trust other curators to install my art. They’ve decided to re-create three exhibitions as they were shown in commercial galleries [“At Random”, Zeno X gallery, Antwerp, 2004; “Der Architekt”, Galerie Gebauer, Berlin, 1998; “Mwana Kitoko”, David Zwirner, New York, 2000] and then will work around this chronologically. It’s interesting as they’re not the most iconic works.
TAN: How do you think US audiences will respond to your work?
LT: The Demolition painting (2005) will be shown which has 9/11 connotations along with the Condoleezza Rice portrait (The Secretary of State, 2005). [1] Museum people didn’t buy it at the time because it was too topical. But then Glenn Lowry, MoMA director, decided to acquire it because she’s a public figure [Tuymans’s US dealer David Zwirner gave the painting to MoMA as a fractional gift in 2006]. It had been misunderstood in a private collection, it was out of place. The fact that it’s been acquired by a public collection is an interesting insight into how the American people think.

Belly up to the Tuymans bar, you molasses-assed American museum-curating bitches! Waitlist forms to the right, er, left!
Update/Note [1] Wait, a fractional gift? You mean David gave the Modern a great discount on his cut, or he bought it himself? Does your dealer still count as a private collection? Because Paul Schimmel told Tyler Green that “a lot of people wanted to buy the Condi,” and that Tuymans saw it as a diptych with Demolition. Both are now in MoMA’s collection. Demolition is listed as a 2006 fractional gift of Leonard and Susan Feinstein [of the Bed Bath & Beyond Feinsteins]. Ah, here it is:The Secretary of State, Fractional and promised gift of David and Monica Zwirner,” with an accession number consecutive to Demolition. Sounds very smoothly orchestrated.
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FWIW, MoMA’s description of Demolition directly contradicts Schimmel’s [or Green’s] statement that the painting “was not painted from photographs or video of the collapse of the World Trade Center, but it certainly recalls countless images from that day.”