Barbecue 1982

Eric Fischl made this, what feels like, suburban nightmare in paint on canvas. The palette is all sun-drenched, bleached-out colors. Fischl is interested in process. Not a slick process, but a raw, exposed nerve type of thing. The paint is scrubbed on thin, like he’s trying to erase the scene even as he paints it. Look at how the light bounces off the water in the pool. It's all these small, broken strokes that create a feeling of unease. And what about those fish in the bowl? They're so present, so real, it’s like they’re judging the whole scene. The way they're rendered with such attention to detail, compared to the almost cartoonish figures, is unnerving. Fischl reminds me a bit of early David Hockney, both capturing this sense of sun-drenched, slightly sinister, California cool. But where Hockney is all clean lines and flat planes, Fischl is messy, awkward, and full of doubt. It's this very doubt that makes the painting so compelling. There's no easy answer, no clear message. Just a feeling, a mood, a question hanging in the air.