I recently came by a video of Eric Fischl giving a critique to second year students at the New York Academy of Art. About twenty students had their paintings displayed around the room and Fischl walked among them and did his best to give some advice.
Here are some notes I took from his talk:
1. "What makes a masterpiece?" Fischl began the discussion with this question. He told the students he saw one masterpiece in the room. I'm sure the students began to squirm, "Is it mine?" Turns out it was this painting, "Auntie", by Aleah Chapin. Chapin's work won the BP Portrait Award in 2012. So, I guess Fischl was right.
Fiscal told the students his definition of a masterpiece: when "intention and execution happen simultaneously on the canvas." He mentioned the scientific term "elegant solution." An elegant solution seeks to explain complexity in the simplest terms. For an artwork to have any chance of being a masterpiece it must be simple. The message it conveys may be very complex, but it must reveal its complexity in the simplest way possible.
2. In art there is always a dialectic. Dialectics refer to logical arguments. Art needs to make sense. It must have a logical base as a foundation. He pointed to one student's work and said it was unclear, ambivalent. The student failed to make a decision on which way to go. He talked about the difference between ambivalence and ambiguity: ambivalence is uncertainty, an inability to make a choice; ambiguity is a good thing if it intentionally makes the viewer think, reexamine or redefine their assumptions. An artist decides to be ambiguous. A decision is made, an intention is defined.
3. Modern, contemporary society is a collage, a reality that is fragmented. We are constantly being bombarded by multiple images, especially on social media. An artist decides how to handle these collages: either by fusing the images together and hiding the fragmentation, or revealing the fragmentation and emphasizing the deconstruction. Many artists, for example, use Photoshop to compose their imagery and reference material. Do they fuse these images into a new reality, or do they expose the fakery, the fragmentation? Do we hide our technique or reveal it?
4. Fischl encouraged the class by stating "I see a lot of sincerity here." He noted there was not much cynicism. Most of the students seemed to care about what they were painting. No one seemed to have the attitude, "I don't give a damn."
5. A discussion about sentiment also took place. Fischl defined sentimentality as "unearned emotion." A sentimental painting is "fake" in the sense that it reveals something already known. The highest ambition of art is to "reexamine, undermine, redefine" what is known. A student brought up Thomas Kinkade, who died in 2012, the year this video was taken. Kinkade's work is sentimental, reinforcing what is already known, failing to undermine or redefine beauty in landscapes.
6. "How do you know when you are finished" with a painting? "I stop being a painter, and become a viewer," says Fischl. At some point in the painting process he stops painting and starts looking, just takes in what he has done and becomes like anyone else who views a work of art. At that point he knows he is close to the end.
7. Things to consider: balance in the work among the elements, a unifying of the space. Do all the elements make sense, do they seem to logically fit in the same space. Pay attention to artifice and observed reality, and how they relate to one another in the piece. He pointed to a painting of a nude woman with a huge bird sitting on her torso, with its claws digging into the skin. The way the bird and the woman were rendered made them appear as if they belonged in different paintings. The bird was artificially inserted into the space and looked as if it didn't belong there.
