George Condo - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, May 15, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    Simon Lee Gallery, London

  • Exhibited


    London, Simon Lee Gallery, George Condo, February 7 - April 5, 2007

  • Literature


    Simon Lee Gallery, ed., George Condo, London, 2007, p. 25 (illustrated); L. Buck "I Like Art That Takes Risks," The Art Newspaper, London/New York, February 2007, p. 36 (illustrated); Alice B-B, “The A-List,” Vanity Fair Online, September 2, 2007, n.p. (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay


    "George Condo has always been a painter’s painter, an artist for whom the sheer act of pushing paint around on a canvas marks the beginning, rather than the resolution, of his creative process. In the studio he can insouciantly complete a canvas a day when he’s in the mood, and it would be hard to overstate his love of paint. “I could roll myself in it, drink it, eat it, and kill myself, suffocating in it,” he once said. His emergence during the go-go New York art scene of the 1980s left him with an undeserved reputation as somewhat of a hedonist, but in reality his only vice has been finding ways to keep working just as he wants to. “I have never denied myself something I want to paint,” Condo recently told me."  (S. Schmidt, “George Condo meets GeorgeWashington,” George Condo: One Hundred Women, New York, 2005, p. 11)

  • 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.

    View More Works

122

Tumbling Heads

2006
Oil on canvas.
80 1/8 x 65 1/4 in. (203.5 x 165.7 cm).

Signed and dated “Condo ’06” on the reverse.

Estimate
$300,000 - 400,000 

Sold for $1,049,000

Contemporary Art Part I

15 May 2008, 7pm
New York