Month: February 2016

I am currently reading “Bad Boy: A Memoir” by Artist Eric Fischl.

The book came out in 2013, but somehow I missed it.

The reviews on Amazon say that the first half is really good, while the second half is a bit repetitive and slow. I am about the 20% through the memoir and I would say it is one of the better art books.

I have always felt close to Eric Fischl’s and his experience as an artist. The fact that he came of age when realism, and particularly narrative-figurative art, was out of fashion is something that I can really relate to. As I have mentioned before, my art was not well received when I first made the rounds.

When Eric Fischl hits it big in the early 1980s, the critics barely gave him any credit, saying that his painting skills were less than great. If I remember correctly, he then went to Italy (mid-1990s?) for a few years; to study the masters and to strengthen his painting technique.

The results of this effort was even more amazing work.

I love this passage from the first part of the book:

“Art is a process and a journey. All artists have to find ways to lie to themselves, find ways to fool themselves into believing that what they’re doing is good enough, the best they can do at that movement, and that’s okay. Every work of art falls short of what the artist envisioned. It is precisely that gap between their intention and their execution that opens up the door for the next work.”

I will keep you posted on how the book turns out.