The much-anticipated Luc Tuymans exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art is excellent. As far as I can tell, anyway. I write with reservation only because this is my first full-on, 360-degree experience of Tuymans (prior to this I had only seen his work in group exhibitions), and it came with a truckload of explanations, qualifiers, and declaratives from the artist himself, who was in town for the opening. He held forth at the press preview for close to an hour one morning last week, walking the herd of willing journos from room to room, painting to painting, and verbally did for us what he usually insists he refuses to do for his viewers: He intellectually explained away the otherwise enigmatic paintings.

Luc Tuymans, Body, 1990; oil on canvas; 19 1/4 x 13 3/4 in. (48.9 x 34.9 cm); Collection of Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst; © Luc Tuymans; photo: Dirk Pauwels, courtesy the artist

I had also listened to his articulate, absorbing (and somewhat entertainingly aggressive) interview on KERA’s Think the day before, and then went to his artist talk at the DMA the following night. Thus I had about five hours’ worth of artist exposition without ever getting to view the show on my own terms.

I would guess that these otherwise mysterious, fast and dour paintings can come across to the uninitiated like grayed-out stills from the kind of post-war documentaries that strongly influence Tuymans. A close-up on a face here, a leopard rug on the ground there, a long shot of an unnamed building over there. His titles help one along, but in isolation one of his paintings might be only as coherent as a single found Polaroid, evocative of something, yes, but leaving only the most interested viewer to fill in the blanks and construct their own narrative, which is, like much enduring painting, a fantastic Rorschach test.

But for this traveling show, which comes to us from SF MoMA and was shepherded here by our new curator, Jeffrey Grove, the comprehensive groupings begin to take on the fluidity and cohesiveness of chronological jump shots, edits, and crops (on canvases both small and massive) of their politically loaded subjects: the Holocaust, occupation and revolution in the Belgian Congo, controversial political figures such as Condoleezza Rice and Albert Speer, violence, exploitation. As with most artist surveys, every painting gives the next one greater context, and each body of work (at the DMA separated by the natural flow of the quadrant galleries) forms a foundational understanding for the next.

Luc Tuymans, Schwarzheide, 1986; oil on canvas; 23 5/8 x 27 1/2 in. (60 x 69.9 cm); Private collection; © Luc Tuymans; photo: courtesy David Zwirner, New York

This is an important show, a kind of inclusive “Greatest Hits,”  tracing Tuymans’ career from his earliest work to some of his most recent, and I can’t imagine anyone would be pained to walk through it: It’s good for people who love abstraction, for those who love figuration, for those who love to chew on political insinuation, for people who like open-endedness, for those who like flat painted surfaces, for those who like “painterliness” in paintings.

It’s not an easy or a warm show, but I’d like to believe it’s a seductive one. It just turns out Tuymans is a wonderful advocate of his own work, despite his brusque and arrogant manner, and for those of us who give artists plenty of slack to be somewhat antisocial, his pronouncements can even come across like that of a man who uses language defensively, to cover up tremendous vulnerability (perhaps that only crossed my mind in the fifth hour of hearing him talk, but, my god, anyone can be worn down eventually), with more than a bit of European post-war guilt thrown in for measure.

Luc Tuymans, W, 2008; oil on canvas; 74 x 47 in. (188 x 119.4 cm); David Zwirner, New York; © Luc Tuymans; photo: courtesy David Zwirner, New York

So for an artist who takes such pains to imbue each finished work with formal deftness yet political ambiguity, he also seems, in conversation, determined to be understood, and only on his own terms. It would have been great if he had stayed in town and acted as the full-time docent of his own show for the length of its run. (Can you imagine? Ply him with cigarettes and Belgian ale for an even longer tour….) Still, the sensitivity in the work grows clearer and more melancholic with each viewing, even without the artist looming over you. As much as he might like to capture or communicate the objective distance of documentary, I would answer that anyone who invests that much time in a subject—whether it be by camera or paintbrush—has already taken a moral and intellectual position on it. Yes, he says he finishes each painting on the day he begins it, no matter how large or ambitious, but he also admits that he spends tremendous time on the selection of an image before he ever tacks the canvas to his studio wall. For a man who makes such apparently undidactic paintings, Tuymans is seriously prescriptive.

Main image: Luc Tuymans, Der Diagnostische Blick V, 1992 (detail); oil on canvas; 22 7/8 x 16 1/2 in. (58.1 x 41.9 cm); Collection of Mr. and Mevr. F. Vranckx; © Luc Tuymans; photo: courtesy Zeno X Gallery