George Condo - 80s New York Friday, December 17, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Private Collection

  • Catalogue Essay

    Ralph Rugoff: Kierkegaard maintained that true despair does not even know its own condition. The characters in your paintings, on the other hand, appear self-conscious of their alienation and loneliness, and invite us to witness it.
     
    George Condo: There’s no unwillingness to be captured. They are living in traps that have been set for humanity.
     
    Ralph Rugoff: And despite their destitution, they exclude a curious air of liberation – as if they were past caring what we think of them.
     
    George Condo: That’s what I am proposing as a way of being. I am proposing the need for a whole new culture.
     
    (Interview with George Condo and Ralph Rugoff, New York City, March 14, 2006)

  • 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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72

Tears for you

1987
Oil, pastel and gouache on paper.
18 3/4 x 12 1/2 in. (47.6 x 31.8 cm).
Signed, titled and dated "Tears for you - Condo 87" lower right.

Estimate
$4,000 - 6,000 

Sold for $10,625

80s

17 December 2010
New York