George Condo - 2011 Guggenheim International Gala Contemporary Art Benefit Auction for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation New York Monday, November 7, 2011 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Courtesy of the artist and Skarstedt Gallery, New York

  • Catalogue Essay

    I think the paintings have to do with the idea of people’s despair today, with the idea that they don’t really have a choice. They may think that they have a choice, and to a certain degree they’re being told that they have a choice, but the choices they make are very much within the geopolitical map for how people should live their lives at any given time. So in the paintings, these characters expand beyond those boundaries. They are questioning their existence. Faced with despair, they decide to live way out there beyond the periphery of consciousness.George Condo

    (Rugoff, Ralph. “George Condo: Existential Portraits, The Enigma of Jean Louis,“ 2006. p. 7.)

  • 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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12

The Butler

2011
oil on linen
32 x 30 1/8 in. (81.3 x 76.5 cm)
Signed, titled and dated "Condo, 2011, The Butler and His Wife" on the overlap.

Estimate
$100,000 - 150,000 

Sold for $280,000

2011 Guggenheim International Gala Contemporary Art Benefit Auction for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

7 November 2011
New York