Eric Fischl: An Interview

Eric Fischl's early works were large-scale abstract paintings. While teaching in Nova Scotia, Fischl began to shift from abstraction to smaller, image-oriented paintings, beginning with narrative works that investigated a fisherman's family. By the time Fischl left Halifax the narrative element was gone, but the subject of family melodrama remained. In the '80s Fischl's large figurative paintings, aggressive in their confrontation with the viewer, began to receive attention. His paintings are charged with repressed adolescent sexuality that implicates the viewer, as well as the artist, as voyeur. Along with painting, he produces photographs and monotypes.

"I work with single events; I just go with images. I had to get over my own sense of embarrassment," Fischl says in this interview with Robert Storr.

A historical interview originally recorded in 1984 and re-edited in 2004 with support from the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fund.