Grant VanLanduyt Outside Artwork Observation
20 April 2020 An Ode to Life’s Growth Gallery or exhibit space: Art Institute of Chicago, Contemporary Art, Gallery 296 Title of artwork: Slumber Party
Medium: Oil on canvas Artist name: Eric Fischl Date: 1983 April 8th, 2019 started with a small cup of coffee and a short five block walk along Michigan Avenue from my dorm to the tall, heavy doors of the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC). A week earlier, I had walked through the museum with an agenda to find a work of art to write an essay for class: I quickly selected a David Hockney painting from 1968 and exited. On this particular day, I planned to take my time--start on the floor above and work my way to a bench to study American Collectors . Before my observation would commence, I spotted Eric Fischl’s 1983 oil painting Slumber Party . I spent several minutes between looking at the seven-by-ten foot canvas and reading the museum label beside it. In the small, brightly lit Caffè Moderno just outside the Contemporary Art exhibit, I spent the remainder of my time studying Fischl and his oeuvre--much more than I did Hockney. Since that day, Slumber Party has not left my mind. Every time I return to AIC, I go back to this painting to stare a little longer. Given the outside artwork observation assignment in class, I knew exactly which painting I was going to study and couldn't wait to go back and dive in head first.
Born in Manhattan, New York in 1948, Eric Fischl grew up in the suburb of Port Washington on the north shore of Long Island (Fischl 8). From all outside appearances, he led a perfectly normal life in a middle class family, but underneath the facade was an alcoholic mother and an emotionally distant father. His initial interests in painting began with abstraction, but with a progression of time, Fischl became known as one of America’s greatest narrative painters. His highly emotional, psychologically charged creations erupted into consciousness in New York City in the 1970s and 80s, along with his Neo-Expressionist contemporaries. His pieces became recognized for their depictions of the dark underbelly of suburban life in postwar America, and an ambiguous reflection of the human experience. Slumber Party was painted amidst the rise in Fischl’s career. Fischl’s gargantuan painting fills a substantial amount of space as it hangs on the wall of Gallery 296 in AIC’s Contemporary Art exhibit. By looking at the painting, the viewer is transported into a tight-fitted, rather bare attic-turned-bedroom space with a low ceiling. The upper corners of the ceiling are concave, a diagonal roof shape boxes the environment in. A large set of windows sit directly in the center of the back wall of this bedroom. Two tall and rectangular panels divide the window in half, each with panels dividing those in half. The bottom left and right windows are open, each peering into a black darkness, a shadowy green tree only visible through moon light. The attic reflects the moonlight through the window as washes of white highlight the plastered walls and ceiling amidst the blues and grays of the room. The left window is raised slightly higher than the right. Three separate drapes adorn a rod above the windows. These almost translucently depicted drapes hang straight on the left, middle, and right sides--streaked with lavender, white, chromatic gray, and the lightest tint of teal. Below the window sits a long horizontal air vent, void of any distinct detail. Hardwood floor, almost too dark in color to be seen, juts out from the background and widens in width as it approaches the bottom of the canvas. The entire left side of the painting appears to sit closer to the front of the visual field, as emphasized by a thin and white vertical line that interrupts the space and raises the left ceiling corner slightly. It would appear to house an additional space in the room--perhaps a closet sits behind it. This corner is filled with a boxy, rectangular television painted in shaded tones of beige as it sits on a four legged metal stand. Atop the TV is a bizarre looking figurine; this humanesque doll is complete with smooth, white skin with two faces. One is positioned to the left in profile and the other turned towards the viewer. There are five visible arms, three facing the left and two to the right, and two legs that are wearing a pair of soft, peach colored pants. Barefoot, the figurine faces away from the center to the left wall, just like the human boy to the immediate right. The boy is practically nude as he kneels in front of the TV, clad only in white briefs. His left arm hangs by his side while his right arm reaches up appearing to turn a dial on the television; his skin painted in a very similar beige to that of the TV itself. He is looking at a black and white screen of the barely visible, angled TV screen. A hazy glow reflects off of his pale, boyish body and onto the room behind him. Unlike the cool grays, blues, violet, and brown walls that surround it, the left side of the painting is highlighted in washes of pale yellow, sienna, and taupe as it is illuminated by an unseen light source beyond the lower left corner of the canvas. As the light travels upwards onto the walls and the ceiling, the silhouettes of collected forms occupy the space. A very dark, large and ominous shadow of the figurine is cast up onto the walls and diagonal ceiling behind it. An even larger head of the figurine in dark gray looks down in profile as it reaches the left end of the canvas, two arms on each side outstretched. Arranged diagonally towards the bottom right of the canvas, a dark blue sleeping bag divides the depicted room in half. The white underlining of the sack is unzipped and visible just below the boy’s left elbow. At the very end of the sleeping bag stands another human figure,. An African-American girl is depicted in rich umbers, blue undertones, and sienna. She stands pulling up a pair of white underwear onto her otherwise nude body. The TV screen from behind reflects light onto her back, buttocks, and upper calves. She stands facing the very back corner of the room, with her upper torso hunched over and leaning towards the right. In front of her sits a diagonally positioned bed on a dark brown, assumably wooden frame that matches the same tones as the girl’s skin. The unmade bed has a white pillow and tousled white bedspread, appearing almost translucent in tones of gray like the drapes of the background with similar wide brush strokes. Behind the bed, in the very back right corner of the room, stands a bookshelf that is painted in a light shade of gray. Although the painterly style is more abstracted farther back in visual space, the top of the shelf holds a collection of stuffed animals and the shelves hold a variety of books visible within gaps in the wooden-like bedframe just in front of it.
In taking the time to look and observe Fischl’s Slumber Party , crucial details become noticeable and serve an important function in analysing the work. The painting style Fischl uses is almost referential to the French Impressionists style of the late Nineteenth Century with loose, fluid brushstrokes. A majority of the palette of the work consists of dark shades and cool colors. Diagonal lines are consistently used throughout the composition including the background, and within the positioning of both human and non-human forms. There is an innate sense of balance within the painting, asymmetrical in vision, but almost symmetrical in its organization. Despite a consistent use of cool colors in the palette of Slumber Party, a sense of warmth exudes from the canvas. Perhaps this warmth is due to the use of light coming through three distinct sources, the moon, tv screen, and something beyond visibility of the picture plane. Outside the window is a tree’s leaves that reflect the light moon and penetrate through the window into the small room. The warmth of these lights seem to overpower the cool colors and bring forth a sense of comfort, like that of summer night. The space, void in detail or uniqueness, provides a sense of universality that resonates with the viewer. They are pulled into the center of the painting and observe a clear division between the left and right sides with a diagonal line running from the upper left to the bottom right. Undeniably, tension fills the room, but despite the mixing of forms there is a beautiful composition that balances the seeming chaos of the depicted narrative. Deep shadows inhabit these corners as a contrasting brightness occupies the opposite, as to create an “X” formation in the interior structure. Diagonal lines are featured across many elements of the canvas: from the structure of the room itself, the positioning of items in the room, particularly in the sleeping bag and bed, and the body language of the girl hunched over and the angles of the boy’s arms. Undoubtedly, it is sexual tension that fills the room. Both human figures are almost entirely stripped of clothes, one wears a white underwear, whereas his friend is either pulling up or pulling down underwear of the same color. The lack of garments, in addition to their undeveloped bodies speak to their immaturity--an immaturity in their numerical age, experience, knowledge, and, in combination to the use of the color white, their innocence. The boy’s innocence may still be intact, but in the girl’s case, it appears to be a bit more complicated as her underwear is suspended mid-action. The tension of the room exacerbates a feeling of unbearable stillness amongst a scene of assumed sexuality in adolescents. Fischl’s hand of wide, fluid, almost messy brush stroke is reminiscent of the French Impressionists of the late Nineteenth century. The quick, frantic style of painting attempts to capture a fleeting moment in time--a “frozen moment” of nature and human experience that translate very well in Fischl’s narrative (118). The moment depicted in Slumber Party appears to have been captured just before, or after, the sexual activities alluded--an image far from what would traditionally be evoked at a “slumber party.” These two figures reflect the same contrast that exists in the other elements of the painting. They are positioned facing away from one another. Hidden by shadow, the girl cowards in shame while her friend’s interests lie not in the night’s activities, but rather the small TV in front of him, perhaps the actions haven’t phased him.
Stark contrasts provide many points of controversy in the narrative--light and shadow, right and left, right and wrong, black and white. What is most present in viewing this work is looking through the context of Suburban America in the 1960s, a time of immense divide. After World War II there was a quick and swift retreat of young, urban bodies to new housing developments outside of major metropolitan areas. With relatively cheap houses for sale in newly established Levittowns, suburban life and culture became integral to the ideal American life in the 1950s and 60s. With its conception came an intertwining of suburban living and racism. The comfortable and quaint ‘sameness’ of these homes, manicured lawns, and nuclear families all looked alike, including the color of their skin. The redlining of suburban properties and refusal to sell to African-American couples and families caused a clear divide between the black and white American population after the Civil War and before the Civil Rights Movement beginning in the 1950s. There is a deliberate division between the left, well lit, white-occupied side of the canvas as opposed to the black-occupied, heavily shadowed right. It is not a metaphorical red line that separates the two, but rather a physical blue sleeping bag to divide--the same bag the young girl stands on as she attempts to cover her naked body. Within the clear division there is also a great balance between the aforementioned shadow and light, black and white, which comes equivocally clear with the presence of the oddly shaped figure on the TV. With its body turned away from the scene there is a sense of ambiguity, vagueness, illustrated with the figurine’s faces. One face is turning a literal blind eye, while the other is turned slightly behind, as if observing the scene and gazing at the viewer. More overpowering, however, is the shadow of the figure’s head and arms cast to the wall and the ceiling. Instead of two heads, only one is visible and a very large abstracted profile of a face is turned away. The shadow of the arms cast a similar angled shape as the shameful nude girl to the right. This ominous shadow stands in for an adult figure in these young people’s life--present, but unaware of the emerging sexuality of the children. Under the private cover of darkness, light penetrates through the curtains and draws attention to the unmade bed, while the light out of sight illuminates the disconnect of suburban facades and the shocking, but the ultimate ambiguity of life in suburbia. Ever since I first saw Slumber Party at the Art Institute just over a year ago, I couldn’t articulate the deeper connection I held to this work. I realize now that what I find so successful about Fischl’s painting is how effortlessly he pulls the viewer in and speaks to a much deeper emotional and psychological level beyond the two-dimensionality of paint adhered to canvas. I find myself transported to my own “frozen moment” in the past, once again feeling the anxiety and shame of those innocent, curious experiments and simultaneous overwhelming excitement that came along with it. Fischl’s painting of a recognizable, harmless, and seemingly insignificant suburban scene spoke to me directly, a sexually repressed queer person living under the guise of a religious family in the Midwest. Fischl began creating art as a way of making sense of the confusing emotional trauma of his youth. When he progressed into realism in the 1970s, the narratives he presented became unconscious representations of his own experiences. Anonymous, universal, and accessible, Slumber Party carves out the cultural and psychological landscape of suburban American culture into an image of uncertainty, sexual repression, and every person’s inevitable rite of passage from childhood into adulthood. Slumber Party prodes at a deeper humanity within us all: the discomfort of growing up.
Works Cited
Fischl, Eric, and Michael Stone. Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas . Arcade Publishing, 2013.
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