Eric Fischl: Bodies And The Beach

Eric Fischl is fascinated by the human body—its shape, its curves, its mind, its interactions.

The artist often finds himself staring, he said, particularly during vacations spent on the beaches in the south of France, or even those not far from the artist’s home—which he shares with his wife, painter April Gornik—in North Haven. To him, the beach is a place between two types of existence—earthly and aquatic—and the difference simply lies within the ability to breathe. It is a major source of inspiration for the painter and sculptor, whose second Guild Hall solo exhibition, “Eric Fischl: Beach Life,” will open on Saturday, August 11, at the East Hampton museum.

“For me, the beach is like a stage. It’s an arena,” Mr. Fischl said during an interview last week in the studio adjacent to his home. “When you paint scenes, you paint dramas, and the places where my scenes take place are sort of psychologically charged or metaphorically poignant. The beach is one of those. Water represents an unconscious rhythm to life. There’s currents and swells and motions, and I think that resonates on a very unconscious level. And then we have people who are basically naked.”

Mr. Fischl, who was labeled a “sensationalist” when he landed on the art scene in the 1970s, first began painting his trademark sandy landscapes after visiting the nude beaches of St. Tropez, he said. With a cheap point-and-shoot camera, he’d snap photos of the people who commanded his attention, all the while bewildered by the clash between public and private spaces.

Sifting through the images back at his studio, he often found himself asking, “What is this person doing? Who is this person? What are they thinking? What are they feeling?” One woman, in particular, who caught Mr. Fischl’s eye made such an impact that she has cropped up in his paintings over the last 30 years. She is most often seen from the back, looking over her shoulder.

“There was something I found so mysterious about that. It’s a pose and there’s an elegance, there’s a desire, there’s an impenetrability that’s not accessible, there’s power,” he mused. “To me, she was sphinx-like. She would often come into these paintings and be like the anchor for them. Things would revolve around the mystery of her. If she’s looking back over her shoulder, what is she looking at? Is this what’s making her tick? Is she looking away from something? Is she looking here so she doesn’t have to look there?”

The subsequent paintings would then try to answer those questions, he said, but never did—and never will.

“The thing about painting is that you start out with something that inspires questions and you seek to answer those questions,” he said. “And then in the process of painting, you arrive at an even deeper experience of the mystery of it, without ever being able to answer the thing itself. The truth is, painters don’t choose to be painters. They just are painters.”

Mr. Fischl was not “one of those kids who was drawing all the time,” he said. The artist didn’t discover that he had a creative streak until he was 20, after first trying his hand at business school and then, once he flunked out, living unsuccessfully as a hippie in San Francisco.

“I liked that we really were trying to change the world,” he said. “We were really trying to find a more, sort of, original sense of the possibilities for social structures. We were really experimenting, and the drugs we were using, we were using to do that, to imagine a new world rather than kill the one we’re in. But I became disillusioned at some point with that and physically burned out.”

By this time, his family had moved from Port Washington to Phoenix, he said, so he worked there as a truck driver delivering lawn furniture. One of his co-workers was taking art classes and the two would argue about the definition of art while on the job.

“His idea of art was taking pieces of bread and gluing them onto window panes,” Mr. Fischl said. “And I’m saying, ‘That’s not art. Rembrandt is art. What you’re doing is ridiculous.’ And he would argue, ‘No, no. Every generation redefines art.’”

The conversations inspired Mr. Fischl to enroll in a few classes himself. Right away he discovered two things he hadn’t expected. Working on his assignments, it was the first time he could actually concentrate, he said, and the only time he wasn’t afraid of being alone.

“And I figured, because I’d never had that experience, if it makes me feel that integrated, feel that good about myself, I don’t even give a shit if I’m bad at it,” he laughed. “I’m going to do this for the rest of my life. It’s like, why else would you want to do something if it didn’t make you feel right about yourself. So that’s what I did. I bit into the meat of it right then and there.”

His early work in the 1980s brought with it a heavy dose of controversy, which was completely intentional, Mr. Fischl said mischievously. The period was plagued with the idea that art was no longer viable and irrelevant. His logic was if he created charged, dramatic paintings that could illicit intense reactions, no one could say that art was dead.

“As an artist, you’re looking for truth and you’re looking for where truth lies and how to express it,” he said. “You’re looking for authenticity, what makes us feel connected, what makes us feel alive. For me, I never felt comfortable trying to create a reality outside of the one I experienced. I wasn’t good at imagining worlds. What it turned out I was good at was being able to see the world I came from and to capture that experience. And the world I came from was suburban, upper middle class and completely dysfunctional.

“For me, it was like, ‘Keep it close to home,’” he continued. “Not in terms of an autobiography, but in terms of painting things and putting them in the places they normally go in, creating dramas in which people are seen in their reality.”

And at Guild Hall, Mr. Fischl’s exhibit will do just that. It is an enthusiastic embrace of what it’s like to be human, he said.

“I guess what every artist hopes is when people leave that experience and go out into the world, they end up seeing the world that way,” he said. “The next time people sit on the beach, they’re going to look around and say, ‘God, I feel like I’m in a Fischl painting.’ Maybe that’s the best way to end it. That’s exactly it. I want people to feel like they’re in one of my paintings,” he chuckled.

“Eric Fischl: Beach Life” will open with a summer gala and VIP preview of the exhibition on Friday, August 10, from 6 to 7 p.m. at Guild Hall in East Hampton. Cocktails, a tented sit-down dinner and live art auction will follow at a private site. Tickets start at $1,200, $300 for juniors and $100 for junior cocktails. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, August 11, from 4 to 6 p.m. The show will remain on view through October 14. Museum hours are Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. There is a suggested admission of $7, or free for members. For more information, call 324-0806 or visit guildhall.org.