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Lot Essay
“Picasso forced others into new directions, that was one of his greatest influences […] In relation to Cubism, I want to see a human face from four different perspectives and four different emotional perspectives. I want to get into their head” (G. Condo, quoted in D. May, “Portrait of an Artist: George Condo,” Vanity Fair, November 2017, p. 44).
A singular figure in the history of the New York art scene, George Condo’s oeuvre exhibits a tense, psychological air that upends the traditional portrait while drawing inspiration from the history of figurative painting. The Drifters is a striking example of the artist’s existential portraits that serve as visual cross-sections of mental states. Ralph Rugoff has noted about these works, “these figures can be seductive and repulsive at the same time. They embody a position that is simultaneously frightening and appealing. This is something that also comes across in the way that they solicit different kinds of looks from the viewer, and how they often look back at us with eyes that don’t match or don’t even seem to belong to the same face” (R. Rugoff, “The Enigma of Jean Louis: Interview 14 March 2006”, in George Condo: Existential Portraits: Sculpture, Drawings, Paintings 2005/2006, exh. cat., Luhring Augustine, New York, 2006, pp. 8-9). By formally referencing the legacy of Cubism and other art historical movements while also crafting a distinctive style all his own, Condo creates characters that beg for further investigation while still keeping the viewer at arm’s length.
George Condo’s The Drifters is a superb example of his career-long investigation into Cubism and its formal possibilities in the contemporary moment. Condo’s postmodern approach to form, color, composition, and art history have placed him at painting’s vanguard since his emergence over four decades ago. This painting finds the artist continuing to probe the act of painting itself, laying bare his thought process in layers of overlapping planes. Like most of Condo’s paintings, individual elements collapse and dissolve, only to come together as a solid, impenetrable whole. The present work, with its pastel background and sophisticated use of flat color passages, displays many of Condo’s most celebrated motifs, like his penchant for abstracting the body and equalizing elements. An instantly recognizable example of Condo’s neo-Cubist style, The Drifters finds Condo examining Modernism’s greatest achievement while innovating within his unique, iconic personal style.
In the present lot, an ethereal field of rectilinear pastel brushstrokes backgrounds the picture, lending it a dreamlike tone and removing it from any plainly observable reality. The foreground’s porousness permits that background to slip through sections of the figures. Their simultaneous opacity and immateriality underscores one of Condo’s basic premises, that all things are equal and organized non-hierarchically in his cubist pictures. Faces and bodies of other individuals coalesce around the two shapely nude figures. However, the lower nude figure’s serene and beautiful face strongly contrasts against the garish, monstrous faces that surround her, with the other disfigured nude figure appearing to be screaming in rage. Across the canvas, the delineation of the figures dissolve, making them appear as possibly being one individual. For Condo, whose paintings are largely democratic in their approach to compositional equanimity, a faint fractioned figure in the upper corner warrants as much critical attention as the bold and colorful figures in the center of the composition. By representing differing emotions through the depiction of the figures’ faces, Condo embodies his interest in depicting the complexity of one’s mentality and the conflicting emotions one may possess. Describing the destabilizing and often challenging nature of his paintings, Condo introduces a new term: “It’s what I call artificial realism. That’s what I do. I try to depict a character’s train of thoughts simultaneously—hysteria, joy, sadness, desperation. If you could see these things at once that would be like what I’m trying to make you see in my art” (G. Condo, quoted in S. Jeffries “George Condo: ‘I Was Delirious. Nearly Died’,” The Guardian, 10 February 2014). Indeed, the composition corroborates that premise, with the viewer’s eye being led through a series of emotion, energy and the frenetic mind. This artificial realism, for Condo, neatly dovetails with his self-described psychological Cubism wherein he paints subjects in several states of mind at once, adapting the multi-point fractured perspectives of the movement. Nevertheless, the The Drifters is deeply captivating and visually alluring, with the nude figures’ seductive stance, varied coloration and juxtaposing facial stylization. The psychological and stylistic complexities both repel and beguile the viewer, enticing endless examination and speculation.
Clearly alluding to late Cubism, Condo’s The Drifters applies elements from that lauded style without miming it. Explaining his frequent references to past painters in the context of his own work, Condo says, “What I mean by the creation of an iconic form of painting [is something] strong enough and recognizable enough as being my own, rather than having taken from historic references” (G. Condo, in S. Baker, George Condo: Painting Reconfigured, 2015, p. 14). Indeed, while Condo’s debt to Picasso and Braque is unabashedly clear, few would mistake the work of the former for that of the latter two. Condo’s work, reliant on color and texture as much as composition, adapts Cubism and updates it for the postmodern era. Here, Condo’s dissolution of foreground and background finds the artist innovating within Cubism, choosing to accomplish that movement’s goal of compositional equivalence with a novel strategy.
Condo’s connection to the rich and varied history of Western art does not stop, or start, at Cubism. Enthralled with Classical imagery and neoclassical interpretations of the body, Condo’s central female nudes appear almost relief-like in their rendering. Their sweeping silhouette and sculptural pose recall classical Greco-Roman sculpture and their subsequent reproductions in 19th century paintings. The background, too, recalls an Impressionist sky, moving effortlessly between blues, greys, and pinks. For that matter, Condo’s touches of bright pink might recall the clear, saturated pinks often found in Pop Art. “As far as I’m concerned,” says Condo, “the Renaissance was yesterday and Cubism was a hundred years before it” (Ibid., p. 104). “My painting is all about this interchangeability of languages in art where one second you might feel the background has the shading and tonalities you would see in a Rembrandt portrait, but the subject is completely different and painted like some low-culture, transgressive mutation of a comic strip” (G. Condo, quoted in J. Belcove, “George Condo interview”, in Financial Times, 21 April 2013). Indeed, Condo’s simultaneous reliance on and refutation of the past is a key to understanding his layered and often irreverent paintings.
Known for his innovative approach to figurative painting, Condo has influenced a generation of painters working today. Along with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, both of whom were his close friends in the New York art scene of the 1980s, the artist helped to promote a resurgence of painting that would have lasting effects in art history. By combining an expansive knowledge of historical visual forms and styles with an understanding of contemporary psychological states and an interest in representing them, Condo has eschewed the more referential modes of contemporaries like Julian Schnabel. “[He] makes frequent reference to the works of Velázquez and Manet, but also to Greuze and Fragonard, Delacroix and Goya, and repeatedly to Picasso. What interests him are how paintings function, how illusions are created, and how stories are told. Yet however important this reference to tradition is, it does not determine the primary appearance of his works” (M. Brehm, "Tradition as Temptation. An Approach to the 'George Condo Method'", in T. Kellein, George Condo: One Hundred Women, exh. cat., Salzburg, Museum der Moderne, 2005, pp. 19-20). Each image is an effort to construct and display a subject that is both inviting and feels at odds with academic painting. The viewer recognizes the visual tropes but is hard-pressed to make a direct link; Condo has so successfully embedded his influences and references that they become his own fluid visual language.
Condo’s career has been marked with several commissions and collaborations, including with the poet Allen Ginsberg, and writer William S. Burroughs, with whom he created a series of paintings in the mid-1990s. One of his most recent high profile crossovers, and one that brought his name to more international attention, came when musician Kanye West asked Condo to produce a series of paintings for his critically-acclaimed album My Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2010. Censored by iTunes for its more provocative nature, the final image was included in a variety of special releases along with reproductions of other works from the series. The following year, a major retrospective at the New Museum in New York pushed Condo’s work further into the spotlight and cemented his decades-long career as a major figure of the New York art world and beyond.
A singular figure in the history of the New York art scene, George Condo’s oeuvre exhibits a tense, psychological air that upends the traditional portrait while drawing inspiration from the history of figurative painting. The Drifters is a striking example of the artist’s existential portraits that serve as visual cross-sections of mental states. Ralph Rugoff has noted about these works, “these figures can be seductive and repulsive at the same time. They embody a position that is simultaneously frightening and appealing. This is something that also comes across in the way that they solicit different kinds of looks from the viewer, and how they often look back at us with eyes that don’t match or don’t even seem to belong to the same face” (R. Rugoff, “The Enigma of Jean Louis: Interview 14 March 2006”, in George Condo: Existential Portraits: Sculpture, Drawings, Paintings 2005/2006, exh. cat., Luhring Augustine, New York, 2006, pp. 8-9). By formally referencing the legacy of Cubism and other art historical movements while also crafting a distinctive style all his own, Condo creates characters that beg for further investigation while still keeping the viewer at arm’s length.
George Condo’s The Drifters is a superb example of his career-long investigation into Cubism and its formal possibilities in the contemporary moment. Condo’s postmodern approach to form, color, composition, and art history have placed him at painting’s vanguard since his emergence over four decades ago. This painting finds the artist continuing to probe the act of painting itself, laying bare his thought process in layers of overlapping planes. Like most of Condo’s paintings, individual elements collapse and dissolve, only to come together as a solid, impenetrable whole. The present work, with its pastel background and sophisticated use of flat color passages, displays many of Condo’s most celebrated motifs, like his penchant for abstracting the body and equalizing elements. An instantly recognizable example of Condo’s neo-Cubist style, The Drifters finds Condo examining Modernism’s greatest achievement while innovating within his unique, iconic personal style.
In the present lot, an ethereal field of rectilinear pastel brushstrokes backgrounds the picture, lending it a dreamlike tone and removing it from any plainly observable reality. The foreground’s porousness permits that background to slip through sections of the figures. Their simultaneous opacity and immateriality underscores one of Condo’s basic premises, that all things are equal and organized non-hierarchically in his cubist pictures. Faces and bodies of other individuals coalesce around the two shapely nude figures. However, the lower nude figure’s serene and beautiful face strongly contrasts against the garish, monstrous faces that surround her, with the other disfigured nude figure appearing to be screaming in rage. Across the canvas, the delineation of the figures dissolve, making them appear as possibly being one individual. For Condo, whose paintings are largely democratic in their approach to compositional equanimity, a faint fractioned figure in the upper corner warrants as much critical attention as the bold and colorful figures in the center of the composition. By representing differing emotions through the depiction of the figures’ faces, Condo embodies his interest in depicting the complexity of one’s mentality and the conflicting emotions one may possess. Describing the destabilizing and often challenging nature of his paintings, Condo introduces a new term: “It’s what I call artificial realism. That’s what I do. I try to depict a character’s train of thoughts simultaneously—hysteria, joy, sadness, desperation. If you could see these things at once that would be like what I’m trying to make you see in my art” (G. Condo, quoted in S. Jeffries “George Condo: ‘I Was Delirious. Nearly Died’,” The Guardian, 10 February 2014). Indeed, the composition corroborates that premise, with the viewer’s eye being led through a series of emotion, energy and the frenetic mind. This artificial realism, for Condo, neatly dovetails with his self-described psychological Cubism wherein he paints subjects in several states of mind at once, adapting the multi-point fractured perspectives of the movement. Nevertheless, the The Drifters is deeply captivating and visually alluring, with the nude figures’ seductive stance, varied coloration and juxtaposing facial stylization. The psychological and stylistic complexities both repel and beguile the viewer, enticing endless examination and speculation.
Clearly alluding to late Cubism, Condo’s The Drifters applies elements from that lauded style without miming it. Explaining his frequent references to past painters in the context of his own work, Condo says, “What I mean by the creation of an iconic form of painting [is something] strong enough and recognizable enough as being my own, rather than having taken from historic references” (G. Condo, in S. Baker, George Condo: Painting Reconfigured, 2015, p. 14). Indeed, while Condo’s debt to Picasso and Braque is unabashedly clear, few would mistake the work of the former for that of the latter two. Condo’s work, reliant on color and texture as much as composition, adapts Cubism and updates it for the postmodern era. Here, Condo’s dissolution of foreground and background finds the artist innovating within Cubism, choosing to accomplish that movement’s goal of compositional equivalence with a novel strategy.
Condo’s connection to the rich and varied history of Western art does not stop, or start, at Cubism. Enthralled with Classical imagery and neoclassical interpretations of the body, Condo’s central female nudes appear almost relief-like in their rendering. Their sweeping silhouette and sculptural pose recall classical Greco-Roman sculpture and their subsequent reproductions in 19th century paintings. The background, too, recalls an Impressionist sky, moving effortlessly between blues, greys, and pinks. For that matter, Condo’s touches of bright pink might recall the clear, saturated pinks often found in Pop Art. “As far as I’m concerned,” says Condo, “the Renaissance was yesterday and Cubism was a hundred years before it” (Ibid., p. 104). “My painting is all about this interchangeability of languages in art where one second you might feel the background has the shading and tonalities you would see in a Rembrandt portrait, but the subject is completely different and painted like some low-culture, transgressive mutation of a comic strip” (G. Condo, quoted in J. Belcove, “George Condo interview”, in Financial Times, 21 April 2013). Indeed, Condo’s simultaneous reliance on and refutation of the past is a key to understanding his layered and often irreverent paintings.
Known for his innovative approach to figurative painting, Condo has influenced a generation of painters working today. Along with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, both of whom were his close friends in the New York art scene of the 1980s, the artist helped to promote a resurgence of painting that would have lasting effects in art history. By combining an expansive knowledge of historical visual forms and styles with an understanding of contemporary psychological states and an interest in representing them, Condo has eschewed the more referential modes of contemporaries like Julian Schnabel. “[He] makes frequent reference to the works of Velázquez and Manet, but also to Greuze and Fragonard, Delacroix and Goya, and repeatedly to Picasso. What interests him are how paintings function, how illusions are created, and how stories are told. Yet however important this reference to tradition is, it does not determine the primary appearance of his works” (M. Brehm, "Tradition as Temptation. An Approach to the 'George Condo Method'", in T. Kellein, George Condo: One Hundred Women, exh. cat., Salzburg, Museum der Moderne, 2005, pp. 19-20). Each image is an effort to construct and display a subject that is both inviting and feels at odds with academic painting. The viewer recognizes the visual tropes but is hard-pressed to make a direct link; Condo has so successfully embedded his influences and references that they become his own fluid visual language.
Condo’s career has been marked with several commissions and collaborations, including with the poet Allen Ginsberg, and writer William S. Burroughs, with whom he created a series of paintings in the mid-1990s. One of his most recent high profile crossovers, and one that brought his name to more international attention, came when musician Kanye West asked Condo to produce a series of paintings for his critically-acclaimed album My Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2010. Censored by iTunes for its more provocative nature, the final image was included in a variety of special releases along with reproductions of other works from the series. The following year, a major retrospective at the New Museum in New York pushed Condo’s work further into the spotlight and cemented his decades-long career as a major figure of the New York art world and beyond.