Suburban Sexuality in the work of Eric Fischl

My very good friend Melissa, who is an industrial design major at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn is a very reliable source to get your art right. Not because she is a connoisseur snob who would use the term avant garde like it was going out of style but rather because when you talk about art with her, she talks it how she sees it. Yesterday when I was trying to persuade her into writing a weekly post on art and design (her initial response was "I can't promise I'll do it every week") she texted me with a very interesting painter by the name of Eric Fischl, who is an American painter and sculpturer, considered by some as the godfather of modern realism.

Being the amateur aficionado of art that I am, I asked her what she liked about Fischl's work and her response was exactly what the non cognoscenti like myself want to hear; he's a realist painter with a Freudian complex. So I went "lurking" around the interweb in search of Eric Fischl and what I found fit exactly into the description of Melissa. Here is one of Fischl's famous painting entitled "Sleep Walking":



In this painting a young pubescent boy seems to be masturbating into a kiddie pool. It seems interesting to me the depiction of this act in such a strong manner, since it is Fischl's intent to provoke indignation at seeing what otherwise is an act that is common in sexuality. "The intention of Sleepwalker was not to offend but to shock an audience. Society weren’t so much shocked by the act of masturbation but rather the fact that it had been made public" wrote one critic. Interestenly so, the boy in this scene is somewhat unaware that he is being watched, either by us or perhaps by the voyeuristic Fischl. The shadow in the pool is perhaps the only indication that there are highlights set up for an act that this boy intended to be done at night and alone.

This cosmos of sexuality, voyeurism and emotional reaction seems to be the signature of Fischl's work. His depiction of everyday people in normal but not talked about situation often weight on issues concerning moral questions and psychodramatic reactions. Here is one of his famous and controversial pieces entitled "Bad Boy"



The setting again seems brilliant: this private/intimate moment, broken again by the voyeuristic. The light emanating quietly through the blinds. Has the young boy also stumbled unknowingly into this woman's room, just like the lights and the viewers are stumbling into this very same scene? Or he is also participating, suggestively like the fruits on the table? "He paints these great scenes that make you question what is really going on" said Melissa. Is this a painting about the loss of innocence or of the often private and exciting encounters with sexuality like in "Sleep Walking"? Crude or just normal? Human sexuality is the rawest of human needs anyway and at the end we are all active participants in its menage.

P.S. I will try to convince Melissa to write this post herself next Tuesday and later this week a post about Art Basel.