Central to George Condo’s practice is a fundamental balance of contradiction and amalgamation. Teasing the line between the grotesque and the captivating, the comedic and tragic, Condo summons the Old Masters and art historical approaches such as Cubism, reconfiguring established forms and ideas into a completely new aesthetic. The artist’s acclaimed singular and iconic approach challenges and re-defines the conventional notion of figurative portraiture. In Untitled, 1998, Condo tackles the traditional motif of the mother and child, concurrent to the female nude, skewing our preconceived ideologies with his challenging portrayal.

Pablo Picasso, Mother and Child by a Fountain, 1901, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence, Artwork: © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2022

The present work is framed in the artist’s carved gilt frame, utilising the traditional portraiture format. Paying ode to Cubism, with an awareness of popular culture, to create a character that is simultaneously 'seductive and repulsive' yet 'frightening and appealing,'ⁱ Picasso’s considerable influence is evident in Condo’s exploration into the re-invention of the facial features. Despite their distorted eerie changes of form, Ralph Rugoff notes that Condo also instils his subjects with a sense of indefinable pathos: 'Unlike in caricature… the preposterous features of these figures are in fact rendered with great sympathy. Drawing on the traditional rhetoric of portraiture, Condo imbues his invented subjects with a compelling psychological presence.'ⁱⁱ

In typical Condo fashion, further similarities make a swift departure. Set in front of a blue background, with clear bubbles in the air, the dream-like quality is sinisterly countered by the red drops of blood that hit each figure on the head and the mother’s shoulder. Characteristic of Condo’s partiality for amplification and distortion, the mother and child are depicted with exaggerated ears, rabbit teeth and large bug eyes. The mother gazes down adoringly at her young child, who hangs like a rag doll in her hooked arm. The iconography of motherly love is thus disrupted by an unconventional and jarring image, provoking critical contemplation.

Condo’s masterful painterly technique and strong characterisation of the figures set against an ethereal backdrop, creates an effect that is both stylistically elegant and disturbing, repulsive and sympathetically engaging. The artist’s vision, embodied in the present work, uniquely and imaginatively re-examines the canon of the mother and child and female nude in history of art.

Collector's Digest

•   George Condo is represented by Hauser & Wirth.

•   Condo started his artistic career as studio assistant to Andy Warhol.

•   Condo refers to his surrealist style as ‘psychological cubism’ and ‘artificial realism’ that captures the subject’s multiplicity and is a distinctly American take on European art history.

•   His works invoke art historical influences like Pablo Picasso, Diego Velázquez, Henri Matisse and Cy Twombly.

•   In 2021 alone Condo had solo exhibitions at Hauser & Wirth, Long Museum, Sprüth Magers and Galerie Andrea Caratsch.

ⁱ Ralph Rugoff, 'The Enigma of Jean Louis: Interview 14 March 2006,' in George Condo: Existential Portraits: Sculpture, Drawings, Paintings 2005/2006, exh. cat., Luhring Augustine, New York, 2006, pp. 8 - 9

ⁱⁱ George Condo: Mental States, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 2011, p. 16
- Provenance
  Yoko Ono, New York (acquired directly from the artist)
  Acquired from the above by the present owner
- Artist Biography
  George Condo
  American
  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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