9 minute read
Face Off
from Baku - Autumn 2016
Beguiling yet frightening, the many faces of George Condo’s psychological works are now part of a major retrospective in Baku. We ask why the great American artist has such a magnetic pull.
Words by ANNA WALLACE-THOMPSON
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The artist in his Upper East Side studio in New York.
The girl – youthful, cheerful – beams at somebody just out of your line of sight, her eyes drawn to a point outside of the small, neat canvas in which she resides. Her delicate clavicles are highlighted by a warm light, encased in a simple white collar. Her tidy brown hair is glossy and smooth, swept back with a sort of deftness that implies coolness and restraint. There’s a whiff of the great portrait masters Rembrandt and Rubens in her dark dress and elegant pale neck, yet behind cherry lips there looms a living nightmare – a second face comes into view over the horizon of her cheek, like an invading morass. This other face is a messy, dangerous Cubist explosion of technicolour chimpanzee grin – The Smiling Girl (2007), by George Condo, is half-dream, half-terror, the revelation of the animal within. But then, this is the way of the American painter – take The Infernal Rage of Rodrigo (2008), where mad eyes and jagged teeth dominate an otherwise stately portrait, or The Opera Singer (2003), in which soft white dress and parasol are topped with purple muppet fur and soulful creature eyes.
It is this crashing and gliding around of different worlds that has come to define the works of the prolific American artist. For Condo, characters exist at the nexus of a variety of emotions. Describing his technique as “psychological cubism”, he explores the numerous co-existing states of mind within any one individual. He lays them out, fays them, opens up liminal spaces only to smash them together like the Large Hadron Collider. His eye looks deep into the human brain and jumps across multiple temporal planes, squeezing emotions into each other so that they slip and slide and merge uneasily across a portrait’s face.
Born in 1957 in New Hampshire, Condo moved to New York’s East Village in the early 1980s, where he was introduced to the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring (both of whom were to become good friends) and Andy Warhol, working at the latter’s factory for two years on his silk-screen series. However, it was a meeting with famed dealer Barbara Gladstone during a stint in Europe that led to dual exhibitions in New York (at Pat Hearn and Gladstone’s eponymous gallery) that helped put him on the map. His distinctive painterly style has defined him over the decades as a master innovator – he fearlessly and seamlessly melds together different elements to create works that move beyond pastiche and derivation into new territories.
A keen musician, he has also crossed over into mainstream celebrity through collaboration with the likes of Kanye West (illustrating the cover of Kanye’s 2010 album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy), and even received a shout-out in Jay-Z’s 2013 song ‘Picasso Baby’. “Condo’s main strength, frst and foremost, is his technique, he’s a brilliant technician,” explains longtime friend and dealer, Swiss-based Andrea Caratsch. “He handles oil like Manet or Velasquez would have done, however, what sets him apart is that he comes from an American background, yet spent his formative years in Europe. He was exposed to art techniques here; not only old and modern masters but contemporary visionaries, such as Martin Kippenberger. He mixes American infuences with a European touch, and he has invented something completely new – he cannot be attributed to any particular school.”
Indeed, Condo’s iconic roster of characters is, to many, as familiar as the style in which they are painted. However, ‘George Condo: Selections from a Private Collection’, a major retrospective in Baku at the city’s famous Zaha Hadid-designed Heydar Aliyev Centre (until 6 November 2016) reveals the many facets of his oeuvre by bringing together some 80 works spanning Condo’s career to date. “It was important to us to show aspects of his different activities,” says Simon de Pury, who, along with his wife, Michaela, has curated the exhibition. “He is a painter, a sculptor, but also a silkscreen maker and a draughtsman. We wanted to show some of the fnest examples of each of these categories.” The works were selected by de Pury and Caratsch from the latter’s extensive collection – one of the largest in the world.
Held in collaboration with the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, the exhibition is also remarkable for its decision to break away from a more traditional temporal representation to accommodate a thematic approach. Works from the early years through to the early 1990s and beyond are displayed chronologically, but then the viewer is allowed to delve into what Caratsch refers to as the “Goyesque room”, full of darker works, as well as a group of sculptures entitled ‘The Lost Civilization’, where tortured faces in polished bronze seem to foat in the room. The space of the Heydar Aliyev Centre itself also plays an important role, as de Pury explains, “Zaha’s building is something incredibly beautiful and quite overwhelming. It’s a giant sculpture in itself.”
The Duke of Marlborough (2008).
The artist with Kanye West, New York, 2011.
The Virgin Cartwright (1998).
The Opera Singer (2003).
Big Nude (detail) (1999).
(From left) Mrs Faust (2002), Miss Faust (2002), Smiling Woman with Hat (2008), and central sculpture The Trapped Priest (2005).
Smiling Girl (2007).
(From left) The Trapped Hunter (1993), Vanité No.2 (1991).
(On wall) Andy Griffith Composition (1998) and (sculpture) Space Ship (2002).
Nick Rhodes (left) and Nefer Suvio.
Satyricon (1989).
Granny (1998).
Condo aficionados include Paloma Faith.
What is most surprising is the sheer variety – not just of medium but of scale and technique. Take A Time to Remember (1984), with its hints of Dalíesque hazy skies, or the imposing Satyricon (1989), with its overtures of royal blue Matisse. Then, in the form of Tom and Jerry No.1 (1986), Condo does a complete 180, presenting a mixed-media and paper collage that seems straight from the annals of the great Pop artists. Turn again, and there he is blowing bubbles in a 1998 self-portrait in the form of a silk screen as bright as an acid trip. There are nuanced graphite on paper works, too, such as Female in State of Temptation (2004), in which realism slides with that now familiar fuidity into cubist machinations. There is Condo’s tell-tale playfulness sprinkled throughout the exhibition as well – keep an eye out for a slightly surprised Bill Gates in the guise of a Renaissance minstrel in another silk screen, The American Renaissance (1999). “Condo’s recent work is, actually, most probably his best work,” muses de Pury. “For so many artists their strongest work is the work they became famous for and then it just ends up repeating itself. George has consistently become stronger and stronger instead.”
Indeed, an upcoming exhibition at Berlin’s Museum Berggruen, opening this November, will showcase Condo’s work alongside those of that greatest master of all time, Picasso, whose works are simultaneously on display at the museum. “George Condo is totally unique, and more than that, is an artist’s artist,” says Caratsch. “He has infuenced so many of the younger generation, from John Currin to Lisa Yuskavage, but he is still the most daring. Condo was the frst one to transform people. He is an inventor of images, and completely unconnected to anything or anyone else.”
‘George Condo: Selections from a Private Collection’ is on view at the Heydar Aliyev Centre until 6 November 2016.
Young Woman with a Pearl Necklace (2005).
Female in a State of Temptation (2004).
Gil Evans (2002).
The Opera Singer (Rosina) (2006).
