The Smoking Sailor

'George Condo makes frequent reference to the works of Velazquez 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. Attention is what Condo's figures initially demand, located as they are between the grotesque and the comic, protagonists caught between comedy and tragedy.' (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).