Eric Fischl

“In Paris, we spent hours at the Louvre examining great works by Géricault, Trioson, Da Vinci—the Mona Lisa was surprisingly small but had yet to be cordoned off and encased—and Ingres. I remember marveling at Ingres’s Valpinçon Bather. April and I couldn’t believe you could make a painting that embodied such silence. I also remember looking at Jacques-Louis David’s paintings The Coronation of Napoleon and The Death of Marat and trying to rationalize how an artist could at one moment celebrate so brilliantly the hero of the French Revolution, only to turn around and glorify the embodiment of imperialist ambition. Let’s face it, artists are whores. They go where the money is, where they’re loved and appreciated.”
― Eric Fischl, Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas

“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.”
― Eric Fischl, Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas