2012-2017

Beer Garden

Nicole Eisenman

American (born France), born 1965

Brooklyn-based Eisenman made a mark in the 1990s with her paintings of neighborhood beer gardens teeming with portraits of friends from the LGBTQ community. In 2011 she stopped painting to devote a year to mastering printmaking techniques, culminating in Beer Garden, her most monumental print to date.

Bristling with activity in that inebriated moment before, as Eisenman puts it, “things go south,” this spectacular print is peppered with revelrous and debaucherous vignettes. In the foreground, the artist appears in a distorted self-portrait reflected in the bottom of a large beer stein, both a participant in and an observer of this carousal.