Tuymans Jesus and The Second Coming of 1990s Figuration

is this butterfly anime meme where a pale guy with dark hair and glasses gestures toward a screenshot of a david zwirner gallery summer exhibition of 1995 figurative painting in new york, which has replaced the butterfly, as he gestures to say, is this being old?

After overcoming the shock to my psyche of seeing an art world moment I very much lived right in and through turned into an historicized theme for a summer group show at David Zwirner—who, let’s be clear, was also there the first time, and so is, for some reason, partly doing this to himself—I did wonder what the Rubells’ Luc Tuymans painting of Jesus was doing there.

a four by two foot painting of a german actor dressed as jesus, white with very neatly groomed hair and beard, wearing a white robe and red cloak/mantle over his right shoulder, he stands in 3/4 angle, painted from the waist up against a plain, light/dark background. luc tuymans' christ, from 1998, via david zwirner
Luc Tuymans, Christ, 1998, 48 1/4 x 22 7/8 in., oil on canvas, ex-?RFC via DZ

The first time I saw this, I wondered about Tuymans’ source image; a few years after this he’d made some works using Mormon imagery—actually, he took Polaroids of the screen while watching a show on Belgian TV in the late 1990s.

In the 1990s the LDS Church had begun using a newer, more naturalistically painted picture of Jesus with a red cloak, like this one, but the angle was different. It still made me wonder. If Tuymans had used it for source/inspiration, it seemed odd that he’d change the angle and entire composition so significantly. And he did not.

This painting was from a Feb. 1999 show at Zeno X in Antwerp titled “The Passion.” It was a series related to the Passion Play performed every ten years at Oberammergau, Germany.

a photo of a 3/4 view a white german guy portraying jesus in a white robe, with a red cloak over his far (right) shoulder, as published in the 1970 program/catalogue for the passion play at oberammergau, germany, via some ebay seller
image of Helmut Fischer as Christ from the illustrated catalogue for the 1970 Oberammergau Passion Play, via ebay

Turns out Tuymans used the photo from the catalogue of the 1970 production of the actor who played Christ, Helmut Fischer. [update: while I knew the foundational anti-semitic history of the Passion Play, on Bluesky Jörg points out how that anti-semitism persisted, even after Oberammergau’s biggest fan (Hitler) was defeated. Turns out the 1970 production, the first since Vatican II, was specifically condemned by the Pope for keeping newly disavowed bigoted portrayals of Jesus-era Jews. They’ve been working on it ever since.]

While that clears that up, I do still wonder about Zwirner revisiting Circa 1995 New Figuration just as the Rubells are divesting it. This could be driven less by art history and more by estate planning.