Eric Fischl's Memoir 'Bad Boy' Explores His Figurative Painting Career and Personal Struggles

Eric Fischl's autobiography 'Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas,' co-authored with Michael Stone, chronicles his journey as a figurative painter during the 1980s when critical opinion often marginalized painting. The book reveals how Fischl's traumatic childhood, including his mother's alcoholism and suicide, influenced his choice of psychosexual subjects in his work. While contemporaries like Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Sherrie Levine, Cindy Sherman, and Barbara Kruger engaged with European painting history, feminism, or art market critiques, Fischl focused on middle-class white American male narratives. He studied at CalArts where painting was disregarded, initially creating abstract works before finding his voice through storytelling. Fischl describes feeling like a fraud despite his fame and acknowledges the challenges posed by peers that pushed him to become a better painter. His long-term relationship with landscape artist April Gornik is noted as stable and enviable. The memoir effectively concludes around 1990 when Fischl moved to the country and shifted to sculpture, feeling out of sync with emerging younger artists. Fischl criticizes contemporary artists like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons for using art styles as self-promotion, though he benefited from the stylistic broadening of the 1980s that Arthur Danto termed the 'post-historical' period. The book includes a conversation event with Robert Berlind at the National Academy Museum.