George Condo

Private Collection, Hong Kong (acquired directly from the artist)

Sale: Sotheby's, London, Contemporary Art, Including Arab & Iranian Art, 16 October 2009, Lot 208

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the light blue is more saturated, the flesh tonalities are heightened and the golden ground is cooler in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Very close inspection reveals a few minute fly spots to the centre of the bottom edge and a light diagonal rub mark to the top left hand corner.No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

George Condo’s Untitled bears witness to the chimerical hybridisation that is synonymous with the artist’s ingenious treatment of the contemporary psyche. Illustrating one of Condo’s signature nude female figures standing over a supine male figure, cloaked in a hirsute garment, Untitled is both bitingly satirical and curiously poignant. Condo’s iconic portraits present a singularly apposite commentary on contemporary society through their instantly recognisable distortions and geometric additions. Despite their quasi-grotesque alterations of form, Ralph Rugoff notes that Condo also imbues his characters with a sense of ineffable 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” (Ralph Rugoff, ‘The Mental States of America,’ in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Hayward Gallery, George Condo: Mental States, 2011-12, p. 16). Executed some twenty-five years after the artist first burst onto the international scene, Untitled is quintessentially Condo. It is both a remarkable synthesis of art history and the grotesque, and an extraordinary examination of the deepest recesses of the psychological.

Since the early 1980s, Condo has pioneered a hybrid-topography of the human figure, inventing a fictional schema as a means to explore the tenets of subjectivity. Born of an intense dialogue between art history and popular culture, Condo’s paintings conjure stylistic traits that are absorbed from a multitude of canonical influences. Spanning from Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, Ingres, Manet, Goya, Velázquez, Géricault, to caricature, comics and the Looney Tunes, Condo draws from an enormous repository of pictorial signifiers, corporeally melding their protean features into a unique brand of psychologically charged portraiture. Navigating an uncanny topography, Condo's fantastical beings emotively deliver a schizophrenic marriage of horror, pathos and humour to expose intense psychic states. The artist's imaginary sitters in Untitled disturbingly evince a fluid anamorphous amalgamation of incoherent body parts as limbs are equally elongated and truncated in abandon. Rugloff adds that, "chins and necks melt together to form disarming swathes of flesh; cheeks balloon into myriad tumourous shapes; ragged rows of teeth flash unexpectedly from displaced orifices. Yet however odd and fantastical these beings seem, Condo's careful modelling gives them the appearance of volume-displacing, three-dimensional figures who occupy a space identical to our own" (Ralph Rugoff, The Imaginary Portraits of George Condo, New York 2002, p. 11).

As in the very best of Condo’s practice, Untitled utterly embodies this uncanny humanistic element. Like Matisse and Picasso before him, he finds his greatest subject in the portrayal of the female form. Herein, the present work truly evinces the artist's innovative approach to female corporeality: a majestic woman stands proud in the centre of the composition, her nude body laid bare so that the artist could revel in the nuances in the tone of her peachy skin. The absurd fusion of neck and head, and the rodent-like ears and bulbous nose of both protagonists deliver an unnervingly comic element, while the imploring stare of their eyes, in particular those of the man splayed on the floor, immediately engage and arrest the viewer. Set against an abstracted ground of golden, deep blue and pale blue bands of colour, the characters in this eerie scene are incongruously placed in a dreamlike, surrealistic beachscape. Oscillating between provocation and pathos, Untitled perfectly encapsulates Condo’s desire to work in a figurative way “that doesn’t end up looking like some boring realism” where “the point is not to see how well somebody paints a figure, but something beyond” (George Condo in conversation with Thomas Kellein, in: Thomas Kellein, George Condo: One Hundred Women, Ostfildern 2005, p. 32). Going beyond mere mimesis, in Untitled we are innovatively invited to examine the raw, searing psyche of Condo’s enigmatic protagonists.