Image Essay #13

Artist Eric Fischl was born in 1948 in New York City, and grew up in the Long Island suburbs. With his early paintings, Fischl worked to break through the barriers of the superficial world around him both by expressing the way it was and by challenging the way it was. Many of his pieces might be described as “disturbing,” often displaying images of dysfunctional family life or psycho-sexual discovery.

Eric Fischl studied art for a few years in Arizona, and received his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1972. He worked first at a museum in Chicago, then as a teacher at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where he met his wife April. The two of them moved to Fischl’s birthplace, New York City, in 1978, where he currently resides.

The image shown above is one of Fischl’s most well-known paintings, titled “Bad Boy” and done with oil on linen in 1981. The painting demonstrates an effective use and profound understanding of color. Often the purpose of color in artwork is to further enrich and complicate our viewing experience; it can enhance or alter the meaning of the image. In this particular painting, Fischl seems to focus mainly on complementary color schemes (complementary colors are those opposite of each other on the color wheel, and here appear to be on opposite sides of the painting). The blue of the sheets on the bed corresponds to the orange-colored blinds; the red apples are complementary to the green wall across the room; and the yellow bananas balance out the purple-tint of the woman’s skin.