Monogram, the institution, the myth, was born.

His surfaces became the oblique window, constructed of layered veils of paint, each contributing to, when seen as a whole, a sublime emotional statement.

Eric Fischl is undeniably a great figurative painter for all the normal reasons: he is dextrous, facile, ambitious, etc., but for me what really loosens the glands and fills the buckets is his instinctive and flawless innate narrative sense. And especially satisfying, is that this narrative skill is, as I see it, his contribution extending the link of figurative painting from the Bay Area Artists of the fifties to today.

The GI Bill enabled them to form actual art schools like the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, and at California School of Fine Arts, and to help them recover from war.

They did it. For 50, or 60, or 70 years, they did it, and they kept doing it with curiosity and boldness. They kept finding ways to be fearless. Kept finding ways to make pictures along the way that are so goddam illuminating that they nearly knock you out.

If you are at all familiar with the work of David Hockney, you will know that one of his primary themes is perception; He has made drawings and collages and great, startling and beautiful, proto-Picasso reverse perspective, cubist - al la fauve - paintings. Think of his pink porch overlooking the terrace in the California paintings of his home, and you’ll get the picture.

“People, you know, complain that it’s horrifying. As if it’s a picnic for me, who has to come here everyday and see them first thing. But what’s the alternative? I’m trying to see how much I can stand.”

Phillip Guston