The museum nerd strikes again!
I visited the Phoenix Art Museum last Sunday to see three new exhibits that I had been reading about. The first exhibit I visited was of paintings by Eric Fischl, a painter who tells stories with his large scale paintings. I was lucky on Sunday to have joined a museum docent who led a tour of this exhibit and asked the five people in our tour group what we saw in each painting he featured. For the painting above, I had actually already read the description so I knew what it was about. I waited to hear what others thought. The painting is called "October 7: Heading Out". It depicts a women in a big city hotel room who is preparing to go out when she is interrupted by the news of the events of October 7th when Israel was struck by a terrorist attack. One member of our little tour group was extremely good at coming up with stories for each painting. She saw something entirely different before she learned the artists true intent. That lady's ability to create stories made for some fun dialog among our small tour group.
The title for the Exhibit is "Eric Fischl, Stories Told". The painting above is a self portrait of the artist in his studio. I asked the docent about Mr. Fischl's bandaged hands in this painting and he said that the artist explained that all through his career he expected the work to get easier as he progressed. He said it hasn't. Instead it seems to have gotten harder. The bandages are to represent how hard the work is.
It was certainly a great exhibit. I'll go back sometime soon to see it again. I'd like to stand in front of a few more of the paintings and come up with my own stories about the subjects before I read the descriptions.
When I taught, I would put big pictures up around the classroom and the students chose one to write down what they saw and to create a rough draft story. After they were finished, I told them the artists' stories. What this boiled down to was life experiences and it was interesting to hear all the different stories that came from the same picture.
ReplyDeleteOn the bench next to Eric, ??? Looks like a victim from Pompey.
ReplyDeleteThat item on the bench is a sculpture. He did a series of drawings and then sculptures of "falling man" depicting people falling.
DeleteThe artist has a great style, Sharon. I hope that you find time to go back.
ReplyDeleteInteresting paintings. That first one reminds me of Edward Hopper.
ReplyDeleteThat's not what I see, the woman looks like she is talking to some one on her laptop and the bandaged hands just mean the guy was careless and hurt his hands. I never expected work to get any easier through life he should have thought the same
ReplyDeleteThank you 😊
ReplyDeleteQuite different paintings, not sure if they appeal to me though.
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