Eric Fischl

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Eric Fischl: Early Paintings, this catalogue includes full plate images, installation views, and an essay by writer and art historian Phyllis Tuchman titled “Getting Started”.

The exhibition featured nine paintings dating from 1979 to 1989 and reintroduced the works that characterized Fischl’s early body of work, which distinguished him as a postmodern American painter. In these paintings Fischl depicts scenes from everyday life in suburban America including back yard barbeques, beach resorts and intimate interiors. Seemingly harmless in subject matter, the suburban backdrop becomes a lens through which Fischl explores psychologically charged themes such as the loss of innocence, impulse, sexuality and the transience of life. In each of the paintings in this exhibition the audience is confronted with the disconcerting juxtaposition of the inner conflict of Fischl’s subjects contrasted with the commonplace of the external world.