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Lot Essay
The true nature of George Condo can be glimpsed within Monumental Abstract Self-Portrait. It is a treatise on how he has approached the history of painting and his own role within the ever-evolving timeline. Alongside his New York contemporaries like David Salle and Julian Schnabel, he helped to kickstart the turn toward figuration in the 1980s as they questioned the conjunction of abstraction and representative subjects. Reducing the figure down to a bust-length portrait, he instills the present example with an emotional and psychological depth made all the more poignant by his adept handling of material. “There was a time when I realized that the central focal point of portraiture did not have to be representational in any way,” he recalled. “You don’t need to paint the body to show the truth about a character. All you need is the head and the hands” (G. Condo, quoted in A. Bonney, “George Condo,” BOMB Magazine, Summer 1992). Monumental Abstract Self-Portrait shows just that: the fragmented, unruly head confronts the viewer while the artist’s hands make themselves known in the undulating, luxurious brushwork that brings this grinning visage to life.
In the grand tradition of court painting and historic depictions of the wealthy, Condo positions himself as a noble subject in Monumental Abstract Self-Portrait. The sheer size, combined with the bold red vestment and the dark green backdrop allude to the works of Velázquez and Holbein while remaining firmly in the present. A dark outline defines the shoulders and then continues into the sitter’s head where it immediately splinters into a multi-faceted gem. The basic shape of the human head is there, but it only exists because of Condo’s ability to place certain signifiers in specific places that trigger our pareidolia. Two separate rows of grinning teeth are buffered by panels of bronze and black while the cheeks exist as both rounded, illusionistic objects and flat, geometric planes of salmon pink. Above this, two large eyes stare menacingly at the viewer and seem to pierce us with their gaze. The left eye is gray, its iris stylized with multiple black lines as a cartoon dot of light gleams on the upper pupil. The lid is drooping slightly and casts a subtle shadow across the white of the eye. In contrast, the right eye looms above as it seems to burst forth from the top of the artist’s head. Its green iris, as well as the rest of the protuberance, is brushy and shows Condo’s handling of paint as it swirls like a small hurricane. It is only barely contained by a shock of purple hair and the outline of an ear.
The result of this construction is a portrait that enthralls the viewer while simultaneously dislocating our idea of the human form. “Attention is what Condo's figures initially demand, located as they are between the grotesque and the comic, protagonists caught between comedy and tragedy. Only on closer observation does the degree emerge to which his way of painting, his composition and his concept of the figure govern the actual attraction of his paintings, and how complex and independent is his engagement with a very personal tradition” (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). There is no way to escape Condo’s characters. Not only do we instinctively lock eyes with them, but by doing so we begin to be affected by their inner turmoil. Each painted plane becomes a different mental state within the figure that reveals itself the longer we stare.
Condo’s portraits are noteworthy for their ability to contain multitudes. Though his subjects are often hypothetical, constructed from a variety of facial signifiers, he infuses each painting with an irrefutable presence. “I describe what I do as psychological cubism,” he once offered. “Picasso painted a violin from four different perspectives at one moment. I do the same with psychological states. Four of them can occur simultaneously. Like glimpsing a bus with one passenger howling over a joke they're hearing down the phone, someone else asleep, someone else crying – I'll put them all in one face” (G. Condo, quoted in S. Jeffries, “George Condo: ‘I was delirious. Nearly Died’”, in The Guardian, February 10, 2014). It is fitting then that his own self-portrait is an abstract amalgam of shapes, colors, and crystallized features. One can only imagine the crowd of imagined individuals churning within his mind waiting to escape through the brush.
Drawing from the great well of Western painting, Condo subverts traditions that have existed for centuries. In the 1980s and early 1990s, he began to develop a series of portraits that resembled the late work of Picasso while also playing with the division between Cubism and biomorphic abstraction. It was with these canvases that he began to connect the figurative lineage of the old guard with the avant-garde styles of the East Village in New York. Picasso and Francis Bacon are thrust into conversation Condo’s brush. It is from this dialogue that the current example springs. Surveying his oeuvre over the years, the painter’s splintered countenance smiles back at us from the canvas. By working with this fusion of styles and periods, he came to better understand the importance of portraiture and further refined his approach. “I believe that painting needs to transform in order for it to become interesting for each and every generation, but I think of it more in terms of being liberated by history. Liberated by what has come before" (G. Condo, quoted in R. Rugoff, The Enigma of Jean Louis”, George Condo: Existential Portraits, Berlin 2006, p. 7). Within Condo’s dismantling of the Western portrait tradition resides an abiding love and respect for those artists who pushed the boundaries before him. From their revolutionary ideas sprang the new generation, just as Condo’s work continues to inspire the next.
In the grand tradition of court painting and historic depictions of the wealthy, Condo positions himself as a noble subject in Monumental Abstract Self-Portrait. The sheer size, combined with the bold red vestment and the dark green backdrop allude to the works of Velázquez and Holbein while remaining firmly in the present. A dark outline defines the shoulders and then continues into the sitter’s head where it immediately splinters into a multi-faceted gem. The basic shape of the human head is there, but it only exists because of Condo’s ability to place certain signifiers in specific places that trigger our pareidolia. Two separate rows of grinning teeth are buffered by panels of bronze and black while the cheeks exist as both rounded, illusionistic objects and flat, geometric planes of salmon pink. Above this, two large eyes stare menacingly at the viewer and seem to pierce us with their gaze. The left eye is gray, its iris stylized with multiple black lines as a cartoon dot of light gleams on the upper pupil. The lid is drooping slightly and casts a subtle shadow across the white of the eye. In contrast, the right eye looms above as it seems to burst forth from the top of the artist’s head. Its green iris, as well as the rest of the protuberance, is brushy and shows Condo’s handling of paint as it swirls like a small hurricane. It is only barely contained by a shock of purple hair and the outline of an ear.
The result of this construction is a portrait that enthralls the viewer while simultaneously dislocating our idea of the human form. “Attention is what Condo's figures initially demand, located as they are between the grotesque and the comic, protagonists caught between comedy and tragedy. Only on closer observation does the degree emerge to which his way of painting, his composition and his concept of the figure govern the actual attraction of his paintings, and how complex and independent is his engagement with a very personal tradition” (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). There is no way to escape Condo’s characters. Not only do we instinctively lock eyes with them, but by doing so we begin to be affected by their inner turmoil. Each painted plane becomes a different mental state within the figure that reveals itself the longer we stare.
Condo’s portraits are noteworthy for their ability to contain multitudes. Though his subjects are often hypothetical, constructed from a variety of facial signifiers, he infuses each painting with an irrefutable presence. “I describe what I do as psychological cubism,” he once offered. “Picasso painted a violin from four different perspectives at one moment. I do the same with psychological states. Four of them can occur simultaneously. Like glimpsing a bus with one passenger howling over a joke they're hearing down the phone, someone else asleep, someone else crying – I'll put them all in one face” (G. Condo, quoted in S. Jeffries, “George Condo: ‘I was delirious. Nearly Died’”, in The Guardian, February 10, 2014). It is fitting then that his own self-portrait is an abstract amalgam of shapes, colors, and crystallized features. One can only imagine the crowd of imagined individuals churning within his mind waiting to escape through the brush.
Drawing from the great well of Western painting, Condo subverts traditions that have existed for centuries. In the 1980s and early 1990s, he began to develop a series of portraits that resembled the late work of Picasso while also playing with the division between Cubism and biomorphic abstraction. It was with these canvases that he began to connect the figurative lineage of the old guard with the avant-garde styles of the East Village in New York. Picasso and Francis Bacon are thrust into conversation Condo’s brush. It is from this dialogue that the current example springs. Surveying his oeuvre over the years, the painter’s splintered countenance smiles back at us from the canvas. By working with this fusion of styles and periods, he came to better understand the importance of portraiture and further refined his approach. “I believe that painting needs to transform in order for it to become interesting for each and every generation, but I think of it more in terms of being liberated by history. Liberated by what has come before" (G. Condo, quoted in R. Rugoff, The Enigma of Jean Louis”, George Condo: Existential Portraits, Berlin 2006, p. 7). Within Condo’s dismantling of the Western portrait tradition resides an abiding love and respect for those artists who pushed the boundaries before him. From their revolutionary ideas sprang the new generation, just as Condo’s work continues to inspire the next.