Art critic Jackson Arn grew up in Phoenix, but it took a cross-country move to really appreciate the region. He talks about that in an essay he wrote for the publication Art in America, titled “Phoenix Probably Shouldn’t Exist, But Eric Fischl and Frank Lloyd Wright Make It Feel Like the Future.”
The piece starts with this sentence: “As the plane starts its final descent, the first thought you might have is: How can all of this be here?” He goes on to explore how Wright, the famed architect; and Fishl, a less famous painter, viewed the Valley — and how he, in turn, thought about his hometown.
Arn spoke to The Show about this.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Jackson, as I mentioned, you grew up here. So let’s start with what inspired you to write this essay.
JACKSON ARN: Oh gosh, I grew up in Arizona, definitely. I think that like a lot of people who grow up in Arizona, I took everything for granted in my hometown. I remember walking outside in the mornings and seeing purple mountains and these beautiful blue skies, and it was all just totally normal to me.
And then I moved away to New York for college, and it’s the old cliché that whenever you move away, you realize how strange and unique and interesting the place you just came from was. And so I was in the New York art world, and I couldn’t help but notice that Phoenix doesn’t always get that much respect in New York.
There’s a sort of New York aesthetic, I think it’s fair to say. There’s a very New York idea of the way that things are supposed to look and sound. And frankly, it doesn’t have a lot of space for the sort of colorfulness and vastness and just majesty of the Southwest. And so I sort of wanted to write about a different kind of aesthetic, a different way of looking at things.
MARK BRODIE: Well, and what led you to sort of look at it through the lens of Frank Lloyd Wright, who I think most people at least have a passing familiarity with; and the artist Eric Fischl, who I’m guessing more people maybe don’t know quite who he is?
JACKSON ARN: Yeah, maybe I could start with Frank Lloyd Wright, who definitely is someone who is a kind of household name and definitely someone who has lots of buildings all over the country, whether it’s the Rookery in Chicago or the Guggenheim on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
But Frank Lloyd Wright is someone who was, I think, deeply fascinated and even a little bit seduced by the Southwest. He was not an Arizonan by birth or anything, but like a lot of people who live more on the eastern side of the United States, he was really, really fascinated by the openness and the brightness and just the sort of newness of Arizona.
He would always say that Arizona is actually a very new kind of geology. And so he started this school, Taliesin West, out in Arizona, in the desert, and he was able to convince all sorts of disciples of his — young aspiring architects — to move out to Arizona just to study with him and be inspired by the landscape.
And then Fischl, you’re absolutely right, he’s not as well known. But in art criticism, I think you have to write about what you love. And as I say in the article, there are some artists who just grab you with two fists as soon as you see them. And I can still remember the day that I walked into a gallery called Skarstedt in New York and I saw his paintings and I was just sort of riveted.
And I think one reason I was riveted is that I saw his paintings of pools and suburban lawns and those strange bungalow houses, and as an Arizonan, I just thought: “This is what I know. This is what I grew up with.” But it’s a kind of aesthetic that you don’t actually see that often in New York. And I just really appreciate Fischl for bringing some of that to the New York art world.
MARK BRODIE: Is it fair to say, do you think, that Fischl takes maybe more of a — I don’t want to say pessimistic — but not as a happy view on maybe Phoenix or the Southwest, as opposed to, as you reference, Frank Lloyd Wright, who was actively trying to recruit people to come here?
JACKSON ARN: I think there’s some truth in that, definitely. Wright, when he talks about the desert, it’s the sublime. It’s something that you just have to come and see with the naked eye. You have to see it. With Fischl, it’s definitely a little more dark and even a little bit dystopian at times. It’s so bright and it’s so lively that it’s almost lurid sometimes. It’s like none of it is supposed to be here.
And one reason that I am so struck by it is that I know very well what it feels like to fly into Arizona in a plane and look down, and you just see all of these pools and lawns and, especially now, I think you think about all the millions of gallons of water that have to be pumped from thousands of miles away.
And at least for me, there’s just sort of this voice in my head that says, almost like, “This isn’t supposed to be here. It’s eerie that it’s all here — all this greenness and blueness in the middle of the desert.” And I think that Fischl definitely speaks to that.
MARK BRODIE: Well, and as you point out, like some number of his paintings include pools and lawns and palm trees and things that are not necessarily native to the desert, whereas many of Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings at Taliesin West are built from the materials of the desert. It seems like kind of an interesting juxtaposition.
JACKSON ARN: Definitely, yeah. You can think of Arizona maybe in terms of what has always been here and what has been brought here or flown in here. And Frank Lloyd Wright was definitely inspired by the material of the desert. If you go out to Taliesin West — and I would highly recommend that everybody do — you can see not just that the physical material of the building is the actual stone and rock and granite of the desert, but the actual shapes and the colors and the forms of the building are inspired by the mountains around it.
With Eric Fischl, I think it’s true. I think it’s true. The main things in Fischl are the pools and the lawns and these things that aren’t native to Arizona at all, that have to be pumped in from thousands of miles away.
MARK BRODIE: So, having looked at these two creators — one architect, one a painter — and having written this essay, has it changed the way that you think about your hometown at all?
JACKSON ARN: Yeah, I think as much as anything else, learning about Wright and learning about Fischl — this architect and this painter, as you say — it inspires me to learn more about my own hometown. I mean, I’m someone who grew up in Phoenix, and I didn’t know any of the history of my own city when I was younger. I took it all for granted. And I just took it for granted that the pools belonged here and the lawns belonged here and everything that was was the way it was supposed to be.
Whereas when I look at Frank Lloyd Wright and as I look at Fischl and as I’ve learned more about them, I think it encourages me to just be more in touch with the city that I’m in and take a step back and think about how unique it is and how incredible it is that it’s come to be here in this form.
MARK BRODIE: So now when you fly back in and you look out the airplane windows and you see all the houses and the roads and the pools and the palm trees, do you have different thoughts going through your head than when you did maybe 8-0 years ago? Or is it still, “Oh my God, that’s a lot of pools. They shouldn’t be there”?
JACKSON ARN: My thoughts have definitely changed in that time. I mean, the city is still growing so quickly, and the city is still very new, actually. It has this rich tradition and it’s connected, obviously, to American art and American modernism, but I think 10 years ago when I would fly in and look down and see the city, I would think this feels like almost a settled thing or a finished thing. Whereas now when I look down at it, I almost think it’s only just beginning. Things are still getting warmed up, so to speak, out here.
MARK BRODIE: All right. That is art critic Jackson Arn. We’ve been talking about his essay in the publication Art in America called “Phoenix Probably Shouldn’t Exist, But Eric Fischl and Frank Lloyd Wright Make It Feel Like the Future.” Jackson, thanks so much for the conversation. I appreciate it.
JACKSON ARN: Thanks so much, Mark.
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