Master Bedroom 1983

Eric Fischl’s ‘Master Bedroom’ is made with oil paint, a material with a rich history but here used in a deliberately casual way. Fischl’s brushwork is loose, even verging on sloppy; the material is applied thinly, with only a few areas built up to a buttery impasto. This informality amplifies the image’s raw, even unsettling emotional tenor. It is as if the paint has simply been deposited on the canvas, without concern for refinement. The effect could be seen as a deliberate rejection of traditional skill. The very title of the work speaks to the kind of hyper-capitalist fantasy that fuels both consumer culture and much of art history. Fischl seems to be saying that intimacy is now commercialized.