Eric Fischl
(After) Like Explaining the End of the World to a Dog

(After) Like Explaining the End of the World to a Dog, is a response to the ignorance and mismanagement that have come to define the moral crises humanity faces. It draws on the notion — articulated by 17-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg — that sometimes the facts are “so simple even a small child can understand,”  while greed and stupidity render the adults in charge incapable of doing the same.  This limited edition digital painting is based on a canvas in Fischl’s show Meditations on Melancholia, currently on view at Skarstedt Gallery.

Eric Fischl (b. 1948, New York, NY) is a New York-based painter, printmaker, and sculptor. He rose to prominence in the 1980’s for neo-expressionist paintings depicting, in leisurely scenes of lurid color, the perverse undercurrent of suburban American life. Often in states of undress, his sexually-charged figures transgress the social taboos of the middle class, inviting the viewer to become voyeur. Fischl is a relentless advocate of painting and its possibilities, its unique capacity to “organise chaotic stimulation into patterns of comprehensible meaningfulness.”  Fischl’s work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, MoMA, and MoCA Los Angeles, among many other institutions.