George Condo - Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York Thursday, March 4, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    Acquired directly from the artist; Private collection, New York

  • Literature


    Luhring Augustine, ed., George Condo: Existential Portraits, Berlin, 2006, p. 53 (illustrated); J. Higgie, “Time’s Fool,” Frieze, London, May 2007, p. 117 (illustrated); Gary Tatintsian Gallery Inc., ed., George Condo, Moscow, 2008, p. 66

  • Catalogue Essay


    "Back in 1968 as a priest in San Francisco, when he gave a communion a person would come up to the altar and kneel and he would place a drop of acid on their tongue. They called him the high priest. He is still operating today in remote areas of Argentina, last seen in the mid-70s wearing bell-bottoms, a headband and carrying various Hendrix albums into a small village in the Peruvian mountains—preaching the word of Jimi to the natives,"  (George Condo quoted in George Condo, Moscow, 2008, p. 66).
     
    George Condo’s oeuvre has been largely based on the creation of cartoonlike characters, examining the psychology of human carnality and deformity through his dismantled visions of reality. His works evoke humor, encouraging viewers to revel in their own sardonic mirth. Condo’s sculptures share imagery with his paintings: imagery of characters that occupy the artist’s mind as archetypes of human conditions. Condo’s dissatisfaction with his Catholic childhood has preoccupied much of his work with, driving him to create imagery involving the vengeful mutilation of priests.
    Condo’s sculpture Trapped Priest is a golden reliquary to Condo’s experience with religion. A compressed, carcass-like figure sits locked within an overturned grocery cart with its wheels in the air, the cart itself a futile object that incapacitates the damaged priest. The work thus exaggerates the futility Condo sees in his childhood of religion.

  • Artist Biography

    George Condo

    American • 1957

    Picasso once said, "Good artists borrow, great artists steal." Indeed, American artist George Condo frequently cites Picasso as an explicit source in his contemporary cubist compositions and joyous use of paint. Condo is known for neo-Modernist compositions staked in wit and the grotesque, which draw the eye into a highly imaginary world. 

    Condo came up in the New York art world at a time when art favored brazen innuendo and shock. Student to Warhol, best friend to Basquiat and collaborator with William S. Burroughs, Condo tracked a different path. He was drawn to the endless inquiries posed by the aesthetics and formal considerations of Caravaggio, Rembrandt and the Old Masters.

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4

Trapped Priest

2005, cast 2006

Bronze.

28 x 22 x 19 1/2 in. (71.1 x 55.9 x 49.5 cm).
Signed “Condo,” numbered of four and stamped and dated “06” by the foundry on the reverse. This work is from an edition of four.

Estimate
$80,000 - 120,000 

Sold for $146,500

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

4 Mar 2010
New York