What Do You Think of Death

Created in 2006, What Do You Think of Death is one of eight paintings created as part of an extraordinary collaboration between George Condo, Paul McCarthy and Jake and Dinos Chapman. The canvases were rotated between each of their studios and worked on sequentially for a month at a time, with the artists taking it in turns to go first, second, third and fourth. The method seemed to pay homage to the ‘cadavre exquis’ or ‘exquisite corpse’ game popular among Surrealist circles, in which players took it in turns to embellish a drawing or piece of writing. The works span the full gamut of the artists’ practices: from Condo’s distinctive caricatures – prominently visible here – to McCarthy’s Pop-inflected cultural critiques and the subversive YBA spirit of the Chapman brothers. The works were unveiled at Deitch Projects in New York, under the title Meet the Artists – a play on the Beatles’ 1963 album Meet the Beatles. The exhibition’s catalogue cover was a direct parody of the record’s artwork, featuring a photograph of the artists staged in the same manner as the band, under a subheading heralding the ‘Phenomenal Pop Combo’ of ‘Jake, Paul, George and Dinos’.