George Condo - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale London Friday, March 8, 2024 | Phillips

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  • George Condo’s Irish Girl presents a captivating example of the artist’s wide-ranging aptitude for art-historical idioms. Since his emergence in New York’s East Village scene in the early 1980s, Condo has been unrelenting in his ability to coalesce principles of Cubism, Neo-Classicism, Surrealism and Pop Art. Far from being mere quotations or appropriations, Condo’s works plunder the very history of art and range from the grotesque to the sublime. While Picasso’s Cubist construction of figures is often a rally-point for interpretive remarks, the techniques of Dürer, Rembrandt or Caravaggio are equally valued in Condo’s practice. The result is an idiosyncratic visual language that has cemented his position in the vanguard of contemporary painting.

     

    The present example is a uniquely temperate expression of Condo’s fascination with portraiture’s sprawling legacy throughout the codex of Art History. Irish Girl is set apart from many of Condo’s portraits that seesaw between horror and beauty with mangled faces or indeed, no faces at all. Nevertheless, the work stages a theme that tracks throughout the artist’s oeuvre: the bare essentials of portraiture. To that end, Irish Girl is emblematic of Picasso’s Neo-classical style drawings and paintings from the 1920s. With a sincere approach to female beauty, the carefully executed physiognomy and placement of the sitter echoes Picasso’s emphasis on the strength of line and the monumentality of form. A key example is Picasso’s 1923 work Large nude with drapery, which features a figure that is similarly imposing within the space. The broad figure is executed in a manner that favours the noble and full features of the Hellenistic era. Yet for all the hardening effects of the figure’s execution, it is softened by the ever-deepening colours that comprise the backdrop.

     

    Irish Girl resembles a similar approach with monumental and somewhat abrupt figuration that is bathed in the softening effects of the surrounding space. Unlike in other portraits from this period, Condo’s adherence to form is more measured and he even forsakes signature motifs that have come to form his artistic vernacular. Whether from the fractured construction of bulging eyes or the jutting position of teeth, there is a gnawing tension that jostles within each canvas. Irish Girl remains exempt from any inkling of the grotesque, instead allowing the artist’s many reference points to thrum with poise rather than frenzy. Yet, as a half-length portrait, the viewer is allowed to wonder at that which is left unrevealed.

     

    Pablo Picasso, Grand nu à la draperie, 1921-1923, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris. Image: Bridgeman Images, Artwork: © Succession Picasso / DACS 2024

    Continuing his mining of Art Historical references, Condo similarly employs Rembrandt’s lifelong investigation into the fundamentals of light and perspective. The latter’s devotion to the varying levels of articulation and disarticulation can be mapped throughout his portraiture. For example, Rembrandt’s meticulous approach to light and form is often reliant on the neutrality of his background. Swaddling the sitter in negative space that is built up with a masterly depth of colour, draws out the detail devoted to a subject’s features. Irish Girl speaks to Condo’s adoption of the same principles. “When a painting has neutral space around it,” Condo explains, “there’s a tone… from the light side of the face to the shaded darker part of the face, you’ll notice that the background corresponds in an opposite way … That’s just the way that Rembrandt or Frans Hals or any of those portrait painters usually framed their portraits. It does something to classicize the constellation of human psychology that might be represented in one of those portraits.”i The relationship of light and shading as demonstrated in the present work, caters to the cognitive process of viewing. A comprehensive account of the human condition is thus placed at the forefront of Condo’s work. Much in the way that Rembrandt strove to delve into the humanity of his sitters, Condo appreciates that this begins with considering the humanity of the viewer.

     

     

    i George Condo, quoted in Chris Moore, ‘Mondo Condo: Exploring the Extreme Vision of George Condo’s Work’, Ran Dian, 20 March 2018, online

    • Provenance

      Sprüth Magers, London
      Acquired from the above by the present owner

    • 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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Irish Girl

signed, titled, dedicated, inscribed and dated 'Condo "The Irish Girl" 2003 To Thomas with Best Wishes in memory of the Great Times installing The Sculpture' on the reverse
oil on canvas
100 x 73.7 cm (39 3/8 x 29 in.)
Painted in 2003.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£320,000 - 500,000 

Sold for £381,000

Contact Specialist

Simon Tovey
Specialist, Associate Director, Head of Day Sale
+44 7502 428 688
stovey@phillips.com

 

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale

London Auction 8 March 2024