Eric Fischl
Encyclopedia
Eric Fischl is an American painter
, sculptor
and printmaker.
and grew up on suburb
an Long Island
; his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona
in 1967. His own web site describes him as growing up "against a backdrop of alcoholism and a country club culture obsessed with image over content."
His art education began at Phoenix College
, then a year at Arizona State University
, then California Institute of the Arts
in Valencia, California
, where he earned his BFA
in 1972. He then moved to Chicago
, taking a job as a guard at the Museum of Contemporary Art
.
. 'The underbelly, carnie world of Ed Paschke
and the hilarious sexual vulgarity of Jim Nutt
were revelatory experiences for me.'"
In 1974, he took a job teaching painting at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where he met painter April Gornik
, with whom he moved back to New York City in 1978 and later married.
He is a senior critic at the New York Academy of Art
.
Fischl has embraced the description of himself as a painter of the suburbs, not generally considered appropriate subject matter prior to his generation. Some of Fischl's earlier works have a theme of adolescent sexuality
and voyeurism
, such as Sleepwalker (1979) which depicts an adolescent boy masturbating into a children's pool. Bad Boy (1981) and Birthday Boy (1983) both depict young boys looking at older women shown in provocative poses on a bed. In Bad Boy, the subject is surreptitiously slipping his hand into a purse. In Birthday Boy, the child is depicted naked on the bed.
In response to 9/11, Fischl debuted his work Tumbling Woman at Rockefeller Center
in New York, creating controversy since it reminded the viewers of people falling from the World Trade Center
. When asked about the controversy in an interview, Fischl still felt "confused and hurt by [it]. It was an absolutely sincere attempt to put feelings into form and to share them, and it was met with such anger and anxiety in a way that used to be reserved for abstract sculpture, really." Fischl felt people were mourning the building more than the people since there were so few bodies but such a high body count, which he felt was wrong.
In 2002, Fischl collaborated with the Museum Haus Esters in Krefeld
, Germany
. Haus Esters is a 1928 home, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1928 to be a private home. It now houses changing exhibitions. Fischl refurnished it as a home (though not particularly in Bauhaus
style, and hired models who, for several days, pretended to be a couple who lived there. He took 2,000 photographs, which he reworked digitally and used as the basis for a series of paintings,
one of which, the monumental Krefeld Project, Bedroom #6 (Surviving the Fall Meant Using You for Handholds) (2004) was purchased by Paul Allen
featured in the 2006 Double Take Exhibit at Experience Music Project
, where it was juxtaposed with a much smaller Degas
pastel.
This is by no means the first time Fischl has been compared to Degas. Twenty years earlier, reviewing a show of 28 Fischl paintings at New York's Whitney Museum, John Russell wrote in the New York Times, "[Degas] sets up a charged situation with his incomparable subtlety of insight and characterization, and then he goes away and leaves us to figure it out as best we can. That is the tactic of Fischl, too, though the society with which he deals has an unstructured brutality and a violence never far from release that are very different from the nicely calibrated cruelties that Degas recorded."
Fischl also collaborated with Jamaica Kincaid
, E. L. Doctorow
and Frederic Tuten
combining paintings and sketches with literary works.
The latest paintings by Fischl deal with the centuries-old tradition of the bull fight, more precisely with the Corrida goyesca de Ronda, a topic that since its creation in the 18th century has always captivated artists, from Goya to Hemingway and Picasso. The large-sized paintings show the protagonists in the typical light-flooded settings with strong, luminous colours, and contrasts created by the interaction between the harsh Mediterranean light and the deep foreboding shadows.
, New York with his wife, landscapist April Gornik
, where they share a home and matching studios.
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, sculptor
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
and printmaker.
Early life
Fischl was born in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and grew up on suburb
Suburb
The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...
an Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
; his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...
in 1967. His own web site describes him as growing up "against a backdrop of alcoholism and a country club culture obsessed with image over content."
His art education began at Phoenix College
Phoenix College
Phoenix College is a community college located in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. Founded in 1920, it is one of the oldest community colleges in the country....
, then a year at Arizona State University
Arizona State University
Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...
, then California Institute of the Arts
California Institute of the Arts
The California Institute of the Arts, commonly referred to as CalArts, is located in Valencia, in Los Angeles County, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the United States created specifically for students of both the visual and the...
in Valencia, California
Valencia, California
Valencia is an affluent planned community located in the City of Santa Clarita, California and Los Angeles County, California, U.S. in the northwestern corner of the Santa Clarita Valley, adjacent to Interstate 5. In 1987, it was one of the four unincorporated communities that merged to create the...
, where he earned his BFA
Bachelor of Fine Arts
In the United States and Canada, the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, usually abbreviated BFA, is the standard undergraduate degree for students seeking a professional education in the visual or performing arts. In some countries such a degree is called a Bachelor of Creative Arts or BCA...
in 1972. He then moved to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, taking a job as a guard at the Museum of Contemporary Art
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary art venues...
.
Career
His own website recounts, "It was in Chicago that Fischl was exposed to the non-mainstream art of the Hairy WhoChicago Imagists
The Chicago Imagists is the name of a group of representational artists associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center in the late 1960s. Their work was known for grotesquerie, surrealism and complete uninvolvement with New York art world trends...
. 'The underbelly, carnie world of Ed Paschke
Ed Paschke
Edward Francis Paschke was a Polish American painter. His childhood interest in animation and cartoons, as well as his father's creativity in wood carving and construction, led him toward a career in art...
and the hilarious sexual vulgarity of Jim Nutt
Jim Nutt
James T "Jim" Nutt is an American artist who was a founding member of the Chicago surrealist art movement known as the Chicago Imagists, or the Hairy Who...
were revelatory experiences for me.'"
In 1974, he took a job teaching painting at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where he met painter April Gornik
April Gornik
April Gornik is an American artist, known for her American landscape paintings.Her work Storm and Fires is included into the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, as well as in many other national museums and private collections.In 2007, The Smithsonian Art Collectors Program...
, with whom he moved back to New York City in 1978 and later married.
He is a senior critic at the New York Academy of Art
New York Academy of Art
The New York Academy of Art or the Graduate School of Figurative Art is an American private, not-for-profit art university, located at 111 Franklin Street in the Manhattan borough of New York City.-Foundation:...
.
Adolescent sexuality
Adolescent sexuality refers to sexual feelings, behavior and development in adolescents and is a stage of human sexuality. Sexuality is often a vital aspect of teenagers' lives...
and voyeurism
Voyeurism
In clinical psychology, voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other activity usually considered to be of a private nature....
, such as Sleepwalker (1979) which depicts an adolescent boy masturbating into a children's pool. Bad Boy (1981) and Birthday Boy (1983) both depict young boys looking at older women shown in provocative poses on a bed. In Bad Boy, the subject is surreptitiously slipping his hand into a purse. In Birthday Boy, the child is depicted naked on the bed.
In response to 9/11, Fischl debuted his work Tumbling Woman at Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th and 51st streets in New York City, United States. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. It was declared a National...
in New York, creating controversy since it reminded the viewers of people falling from the World Trade Center
World Trade Center
The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...
. When asked about the controversy in an interview, Fischl still felt "confused and hurt by [it]. It was an absolutely sincere attempt to put feelings into form and to share them, and it was met with such anger and anxiety in a way that used to be reserved for abstract sculpture, really." Fischl felt people were mourning the building more than the people since there were so few bodies but such a high body count, which he felt was wrong.
In 2002, Fischl collaborated with the Museum Haus Esters in Krefeld
Krefeld
Krefeld , also known as Crefeld until 1929, is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located northwest of Düsseldorf, its centre lying just a few kilometres to the west of the River Rhine; the borough of Uerdingen is situated directly on the Rhine...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. Haus Esters is a 1928 home, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1928 to be a private home. It now houses changing exhibitions. Fischl refurnished it as a home (though not particularly in Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
style, and hired models who, for several days, pretended to be a couple who lived there. He took 2,000 photographs, which he reworked digitally and used as the basis for a series of paintings,
one of which, the monumental Krefeld Project, Bedroom #6 (Surviving the Fall Meant Using You for Handholds) (2004) was purchased by Paul Allen
Paul Allen
Paul Gardner Allen is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. Allen co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates...
featured in the 2006 Double Take Exhibit at Experience Music Project
Experience Music Project
The EMP Museum is a museum dedicated to the history and exploration of both popular music and science fiction located in Seattle, Washington...
, where it was juxtaposed with a much smaller Degas
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
pastel.
This is by no means the first time Fischl has been compared to Degas. Twenty years earlier, reviewing a show of 28 Fischl paintings at New York's Whitney Museum, John Russell wrote in the New York Times, "[Degas] sets up a charged situation with his incomparable subtlety of insight and characterization, and then he goes away and leaves us to figure it out as best we can. That is the tactic of Fischl, too, though the society with which he deals has an unstructured brutality and a violence never far from release that are very different from the nicely calibrated cruelties that Degas recorded."
Fischl also collaborated with Jamaica Kincaid
Jamaica Kincaid
Jamaica Kincaid is a Caribbean novelist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in the city of St. John's on the island of Antigua in the nation of Antigua and Barbuda...
, E. L. Doctorow
E. L. Doctorow
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow is an American author.- Biography :Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was born in the Bronx, New York City, the son of second-generation Americans of Russian Jewish descent...
and Frederic Tuten
Frederic Tuten
Frederic Tuten is an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He has written five novels – The Adventures of Mao on the Long March , Tallien: A Brief Romance , Tintin in the New World: A Romance , Van Gogh's Bad Café and The Green Hour – as well as one book of inter-related short...
combining paintings and sketches with literary works.
The latest paintings by Fischl deal with the centuries-old tradition of the bull fight, more precisely with the Corrida goyesca de Ronda, a topic that since its creation in the 18th century has always captivated artists, from Goya to Hemingway and Picasso. The large-sized paintings show the protagonists in the typical light-flooded settings with strong, luminous colours, and contrasts created by the interaction between the harsh Mediterranean light and the deep foreboding shadows.
Art "circus" project
Fischl's latest project is a traveling gallery of sorts-essentially, a well-organized traveling art circus. As he envisions it, 18 trucks custom-designed to serve as mobile galleries will travel to each location, where they will unfold to reveal 3300 square feet (306.6 m²) of exhibition space. Together, the whole caravan will contain over 60 works of visual art, 16 music listening stations, and at least two theater spaces where actors can perform scenes and monologues live.Personal life
Fischl worked and resided in New York City, but has recently moved to Sag Harbor, Long IslandLong Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, New York with his wife, landscapist April Gornik
April Gornik
April Gornik is an American artist, known for her American landscape paintings.Her work Storm and Fires is included into the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, as well as in many other national museums and private collections.In 2007, The Smithsonian Art Collectors Program...
, where they share a home and matching studios.
Further reading
- Danto, A.C., Enright, R., and Martin, S. (2008). Eric Fischl, 1970-2007. New York: Monacelli Press.