Saturday, August 19, 2017

Late America

Eric Fischl 
oil on linen
Sag Harbor 
Long Island NY
2016 - 17 
1.Daddy’s Gone, Girl

2.Untitled  

3.Face Off  

4.Callie with Swan  

5.Growing Old in the Company of Women  

6.Feeding the Turtle  

7.Daddy’s Girl Age 11  

8.Untitled  

9.Late America

These were the paintings Eric Fischl showed in NYC a few months ago at the Skarstedt Gallery in Chelsea.  I first saw the last one down, the painting that gives the series its title, online, on Mr Fischl’s Facebook page, directed there by a friend in common.  These paintings are not as directly political as the recent caricatures he’s been making of members of Trump’s White House staff and officials.  They’re more ambiguous and disturbing, though they do seem to stem from the rise of Trump and the extremely disastrous course of US politics.  (Not that things were going so well before his idiotic success, what with perpetual war and mass deportations under Obama.)  One (spiritual) source for these paintings can be found in an anecdote Fischl posted on Facebook concerning the man whose company poured his new swimming pool, who coincidentally was also responsible for the foundations for Trump Tower (Trump stiffed him for 99% of his bill and yet the man ended up voting for him these many years later.)  It’s worth reading in its entirety, and these paintings are worth seeing in person.

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