George Condo - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, November 15, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    Acquired directly from the artist

  • Literature

    G. Condo, Notes on the Sound of Painting, Portraits Lost in Space (a virtual exhibition at the end of the twentieth century across the Millennium destination unknown), Minneapolis, 1999, pp. 36 and 74 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    “So what are the chord changes to a painting,” wonders Neo-Expressionist and Jazz aficionado George Condo. “Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm or Willem de Kooning’s Excavation?”To some the question may seem strange, but for Condo, abstract painting and Jazzmusic share essential commonalities that transcend the simple fact of their historical concurrence. Condo’s Portraits Lost in Space series draws visual parallels between the impassioned improvisations of Jazz legends such as Miles Davis and the gestural freedom and expressiveness of Davis’ art world contemporaries like Pollock or Lee Krasner.Argues Condo: “Just as there are numerous different chord structures that invite the musician to express his own melodic lines there are different colors and forms that create a basis for improvisation within a formal language of the abstract... to reinvent the abstraction at hand which is musical into language of abstraction which is painting,” (G. Condo, Notes on the Sound of Painting, Portraits Lost in Space (a virtual exhibition at the end of the twentieth century across the Millennium destination unknown), Minneapolis, 1999). George Condon stencils the musician’s name in bold block letters across the center of Miles Davis, 1999, a strong statement of purpose that anchors the painting like a sturdy beat while the improvisations-collaged shreds of frenzied, de Kooningesque line drawings and swinging, vivid paint splatters in blue, black and red-twist and swirl around it like smoke in a Jazz club. Here Condo artfully invokes the colorful, anything-goes ethos of Jazz while paying tribute to the painters whose artwork is the visual analogue of a particularly hot riff, tapping into the common creative drive that Condo suggests has pushed air through innumerable trumpets and moved just as many paintbrushes across canvas.

  • 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

66

Miles Davis

1999

Acrylic, felt-tip marker and paper collage on canvas.

36 x 36 in. (91.4 x 91.4 cm).

Signed, titled and dated “Condo 99 Miles Davis” on the reverse.

Estimate
$40,000 - 60,000 

Sold for $85,000

Contemporary Art Part I

15 Nov 2007, 7pm
New York