I first encountered Eric Fischl’s work as a student of his at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in the late seventies. He had yet to embark on his anxious voyeuristic paintings of American middle class scenes. In the 1980’s he quickly became known for his large Neo-expressionist tableaus of Suburban poolside backyards and depictions of semi-fictitious sexual memories. Paintings such as Sleepwalker in 1979 (fig.1) and Bad Boy in 1981 (fig.2) along with nudes that bridged the boundary between studio nude and voyeuristic observation quickly positioned Fischl as a kind of eroticized Edward Hopper, focusing on the private or intimate spaces of those middle class Americans from adolescence through adulthood.
Fig.1 Sleepwalker (1979)
Fig.2 Bad Boy (1981)
Homage to Fellini
For most of the 80’s, Fischl mostly focused on the American scene except for trips to India and Italy when his imagery expanded somewhat to include a broader source of erotic reference such as his Untitled (Homage to Fellini) 1996 (fig3), when his American bad boy morphs to a young Italian boy looking at what appears to be a prostitute. Fischl appears to begin a broader examination of his observations on eroticism, not limiting himself to the American scene. Perhaps his homage to Fellini was a realization that the narratives depicted in his American pictures were not as powerful as how eroticism was explored in Italian film of the sixties.
Fig.3 Untitled (Homage to Fellini), 1996
Professional Actors
This search for meaning reaches a kind of apogee when, in 2002, he is invited to stage purely fictitious or theatrical scenes in a museum- owned private villa designed by Mies van der Rohe near the Bauhaus school in the German city of Krefeld. Fischl used professional actors to create scenes of erotic intimacy more akin to shooting a film than making a painting. Fischl intially turned himself into a photographer for the project then later turned the images he made into paintings.
Fig.4 Dining Room scene #1, 2003
In Premium more on Fischl's sexual narratives, his Dining Room scenes, the aesthetics in the Krefeld Project scenes, many more artworks, and MORE....!!
Click HERE for the sexual tension and edgy romance in Jack Vettriano’s art
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