All-American Angst

Making my way through “Meditations on Melancholia,” Eric Fischl’s latest exhibition at Skarstedt, I remembered that there are still people who get a kick out of seeing the word “American” somewhere in an artwork’s title. Rarely can so much be gotten so cheaply—the four syllables supply shallow depth, insta-gravitas. Would moviegoers have shelled out a third of a billion dollars for something called Sniper? Would Beauty have won five Oscars? Decades later