Luc Tuymans at David Zwirner

 Luc Tuymans is a Belgian painter and his paintings convey a sense of distance. See Frank above.

In Art in America published about a month ago, Tuymans said about his current show, "These paintings play upon the other sense of romanticism, which is the artist looking at his work, and a certain element of accomplishment which is not an accomplishment, but can be seen as an ironic end or not. They are about persisting in the idea of perception and looking at things. They're also an exercise in working within the narrow line between what figuration is and what abstraction can be."

What is this romanticism Tuymans is talking about? AiA did not capitalize the word romanticism, which confused me but I would interpret it as the Romanticism with capital R, defined as "a literary, artistic, and philosophical movement originating in the 18th century, characterized chiefly by a reaction against neoclassicism and an emphasis on the imagination and emotions, and marked especially in English literature by sensibility and the use of autobiographical material, an exaltation of the primitive and the common man, an appreciation of external nature, an interest in the remote, a predilection for melancholy, and the use in poetry of older verse forms..." (Marriam-Webster) This is a lengthy description and that just goes to affirm the fuzziness of this definition.

Whatever the formal meaning may be, one aspect of the definition that stood out to me was the use of autobiographical material, which was the case with Tuymans' works for this show "The Summer is Over" at David Zwirner. Tuymans is known to use visual material from the internet and this show in particular has been an introspective one with many of the painting subjects from around himself: picture of himself, photos he took, a window pane across the street. Tuymans adds, "I wanted to... go back to this very intimate point but then again, close it off as the spectator is looking at it. I also close it off to myself."'Intimate but closed off' sounds ironic, but isn't that the case with most things in life? Once you are too close, you sometimes feel even more detached. Sometimes, you can relate to things when you are a step away from them, and perhaps even more true in the internet age. Romanticism in this era means looking inward, but also being closed off.

Image via David Zwirner