Icon of Erotic Art #33

Bad Boy (1981) by Eric Fischl

Today is Icon of Erotic Art #33 day. Remember this series is handmade, I’m not pulling this out of a list. So it was with great pleasure that I was reminded Eric Fischl‘s Bad Boy painting[1].

Bad Boy (1981) depicts a young boy looking at and older woman shown in a provocative masturbatory (a beaver shot to be precise) pose on a bed, while the subject is surreptitiously slipping his hand into the woman’s purse and presumedly stealing its contents.

The painting unites eroticism and crime, between the two is a very strong link first explored by Sade and verbally juxtaposed by Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly in Happiness in Crime, a short story first published in the 1874 collection Les Diaboliques. I hope to explore this connection later.

Bad Boy is a painting which provokes the imagination, an equal amount of events seem to be in the painting as outside of it.

I imagine the neighborhood outside the room depicted suburbian. I imagine her husband (she is married and sexually neglected) watering the garden in a David Hockney painting manner. Maybe her husband is taking a A Bigger Splash[2] in their pool. Or the same husband is entertaining his gay lover in Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)[3].

Since all figurative painting involving the human figure is narrative painting a number of questions can be raised:

What is the relationship between the older woman and the boy? Is he her son? Or is she barren? Is he a neighborhood boy who entered her house without her knowing? Is the woman aware that she is being stolen from and spied upon at the same time? Is it a game they play regularly and is the boy rewarded the money afterwards? Who is to tell?

5 thoughts on “Icon of Erotic Art #33”

John Coulthart September 27, 2008 at 2:12 pm

You can’t tell so well from that Artchive copy that the bag the boy is invading has a vesica-shaped opening which reinforces the sexual reading. There’s a clearer version on Fischl’s website:

http://www.ericfischl.com/paintings/early_paintings_1/html/81_023.html

His early works are well-represented on that site and remind me of David Lynch scenarios with their pictures of bland suburbia filled with sexual implication.

lichanos September 27, 2008 at 6:26 pm

Well, it’s obvious what’s happening. She gets her kicks by inviting in boys to watch her, and he’s taking double advantage. How could it be anything else, really.

The lighting effect with the blinds is marvelous – thanks for bringing this artist to my attention.

I posted about Happiness in Crime – I think it’s the source of the pop culture icons, Morticia and Gomez Adams.

http://iamyouasheisme.wordpress.com/2007/11/01/lamour-fou-happiness-in-crime/