George Condo - Contemporary Art Day Sale New York Friday, May 11, 2012 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris

  • Exhibited

    Cambridge, The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, George Condo, October 15-November 16, 2003
    Paris, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, George Condo: Memories of Manet and Velazquez, May 26-July 10, 2004
    Washington, Corcoran Gallery, 48th Corcoran Biennial: Closer to Home, February 19-July 22, 2005

  • Literature

    P. Fleissig, George Condo: Memories of Manet and Velazquez, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris, 2004, cover and pp. 20-21 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    The present lot, Yankee Doodle, 2003, "was my response to Manet’s The Fifer, a figure standing in a grey undetermined space reflecting the mood of his national origin. In the case of Yankee Doodle, this is a composite in essentially red, white and blue of a man who was sold a dream that could never be. He is the American – partially Captain Ahab, who was our first mega tragic hero – and he has been endowed with a blown glass golf club, a bottle, and the inventive spirit of Thomas Edison or Ben Franklin. One could also say that Yankee Doodle appears like a hunter 'hunting down' the American dream. As was Ahab. He stands before the viewer seeking neither praise nor criticism. He simply is what he is: that which he became. The carrot symbolizing false hope is his attribute. As for the diagonals if you notice the equestrian portraits of Velazquez, particularly Balthazar-Carlos, he is riding on a foreshortened horse in a diagonal landscape, this portrays the Prince as the Master in his imaginary world in which all the angles are bent to meet the demands of pictorial composition." - George Condo
    (P. Fleissig, George Condo: Memories of Manet and Velazquez, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris, 2004, p. 20)

  • 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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156

Yankee Doodle

2003
oil on canvas
60 x 50 in. (152.4 x 127 cm)
Signed and dated "Condo, 03" on the reverse.

Estimate
$200,000 - 300,000 

Sold for $194,500

Contemporary Art Day Sale

Contemporary Art Day
11 May 2012
New York