Provenance
Stellan Holm Gallery, New York, Private Collection, New York
Catalogue Essay
George Condo began his career in New York as a painter in the early 1980s. His preferred genre has always been portraiture, but ones which, at first glance, evaluate art historical conventions. Closer inspection shows the artist’s paintings engaging in an exploration of comedy, tragedy, violence and sexuality to reveal the consciousness of the subjects. These subjects and characters, however, are derived from the fictional world of Condo’s imagination and have resulted in Artificial Realism, a style coined by the artist to describe his work.

Condo’s portraits are invented, so-called ‘Pod people’ who appear like part-nightmare, part-cartoon hallucinatory figures. Coming from the Religious Paintings series of 2004, The Departure and The Arrival feature a priest appearing and disappearing through the clouds. Is the hanging carrot a Sword of Damacles or a dangling reward? Power is a double-edged sword: it is both irresistible and dangerous. The figure’s grotesque features, mid-way between a smile and a sneer, add to the tension and ambiguity. Metaphors slide with sarcasm and irony.

Like most of Condo’s works, The Departure and The Arrival traverse the spectrum of art history, from the traditional gestural oil paint of the clouds to the focal figure, its face contorted and abstracted. Working in New York at the same time as Warhol and Basquiat, Condo was at first influenced by Pop art and the East Village subculture, but a significant period in Paris and Europe uncovered a wealth of inspiration from Old Master paintings through to Cubism. Throughout his works, painterly historical portraits are injected and subverted with a pseudo-cubist twist of the absurd, observing the artist’s feeling that “painting needs to transform in order for it to become interesting for each and every generation… more in terms of being liberated by history. Liberated by what has come before.” Replete with references from Bosch to Bacon, Velásquez to Picasso, Magritte to De Kooning, Condo is a painter’s painter, with a twist.

“I was looking at the contemporary art scene and wondering what I could do to make a statement in a world where painting was relatively extinct. I wondered if you can take the rationality of Minimalism and Conceptualism and put it into what I like to do, which is simply paint. Inspired by Duchamp, I thought it would be interesting to create a kind of simulated found object, something that looked like a fake masterpiece – maybe one day it would become real.”
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.
View More Works

20

George Condo

Two works: (i) The Departure, 2004; (ii) The Arrival, 2004

Oil on canvas.
Each: 90 × 90 cm (35 3/8 × 35 3/8 in).
(i) Signed, titled and dated ‘Departure Condo 04’ on the reverse; (ii) signed and titled ‘Condo The Arrival’ on the reverse.

Estimate
£300,000 - 400,000 ‡

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

12 October 2011
London

1
Walead Beshty
20-inch Copper (FedEx® Large Kraft Box© 2005 FEDEX 330508) International Priority, Los Angeles–London trk#8685 8772 8040, date October 2–6, 2009. International Priority London–New York trk#863822956489, date November 18–20, 2009, International Priority New York–London trk#7952 0098 1790, date September 19–21, 2011
Estimate £20,000 - 30,000 ‡♠
Sold for £46,850
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
2
Jacob Kassay
Untitled
Estimate £50,000 - 70,000
Sold for £163,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
3
Maurizio Cattelan
Tié
Estimate £50,000 - 70,000 ♠
Sold for £91,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
4
Tauba Auerbach
CMY 5
Estimate £15,000 - 20,000 ‡
Sold for £49,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
5
Aaron Young
Untitled
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000
Sold for £87,650
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
6
Steven Parrino
Creeping Eye
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000
Sold for £361,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
7
This lot is no longer available.
8
Cecily Brown
The Torment of St. Anthony
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡♠
Sold for £265,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
9
Damien Hirst
Observation – The Crown of Justice
Estimate £700,000 - 1,000,000 ‡♠
Sold for £780,450
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
10
Jeff Koons
Seal Walrus Trashcans
Estimate £2,000,000 - 3,000,000 ‡
Sold for £2,113,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
11
Lucio Fontana
Concetto spaziale
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
12
Damien Hirst
5-Aminouracil
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000 ‡♠
Sold for £690,850
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
13
Maurizio Cattelan
Turisti
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ♠
Sold for £385,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
14
George Condo
Cave Painting
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ‡
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
15
Cecily Brown
Park
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡♠
Sold for £421,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
16
Richard Prince
My Life as a Weapon
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ‡
Sold for £541,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
17
Anselm Kiefer
Die Argonauten
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ♠
Sold for £601,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
18
Anselm Kiefer
Sternenfall
Estimate £90,000 - 120,000 ‡♠
Sold for £109,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
19
Paula Rego
The Servant
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ♠
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
20
George Condo
Two works: (i) The Departure, 2004; (ii) The Arrival, 2004
Estimate £300,000 - 400,000 ‡
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
21
Thomas Schütte
United Enemy
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ♠
Sold for £481,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
22
Andreas Gursky
Copan
Estimate £180,000 - 250,000 ‡♠
Sold for £217,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
23
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Ligurian Sea, Frumura
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
24
Ed Ruscha
Judy
Estimate £180,000 - 220,000 ‡
Sold for £193,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
25
Cindy Sherman
Untitled #122
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
26
Sol LeWitt
5 Cubes Half-Off
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
27
Richard Serra
Tracks #2
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡
Sold for £87,650
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
28
Robert Motherwell
Frontier No. 12
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000 ‡
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
29
Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol
Thin Lips
Estimate £700,000 - 1,000,000 ‡
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
30
Gilbert & George
Heart
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡♠
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
31
Johannes Kahrs
Eifer-Sucht (Jealousy)
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000 ‡♠
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
32
Barnaby Furnas
Flood (Red Sea)
Estimate £150,000 - 250,000 †
Sold for £169,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
33
Marc Quinn
Red Lantern Cove
Estimate £85,000 - 120,000 ‡♠
Sold for £91,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
34
Tom Friedman
Untitled (T.V. Sprinkles)
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 Ω
Sold for £73,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
35
Nicolas Pol
Specialist of Peace
Estimate £30,000 - 50,000 ‡♠
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
36
Tim Noble and Sue Webster
Toxic Schizophrenia
Estimate £180,000 - 250,000 Ω♠
Sold for £229,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

12 October 2011 London

Create your first list.

Provenance

Catalogue Essay

Artist Biography

George Condo

20

George Condo

Two works: (i) The Departure, 2004; (ii) The Arrival, 2004

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

Create your first list.

12 October 2011
London