"I kind of draw like you’re walking through the forest, where you don’t really know where you’re going, and you just start from some point and randomly travel through the paper until you get to a place where you finally reach your destination.”
W ith his singular synthesis of Cubism, Expressionism and Classicism, George Condo is one of the foremost Contemporary artists of our t.mes . Black and White Composition embodies Condo’s distinctive approach to figuration; its bold, energetic line rushes across the page, with Condo’s signature psychological Cubist facades hidden among the strokes. Executed in 2017, the present work arranges fragments of the human form within a tangle of pigment, demonstrating visual and conceptual complexity that is a hallmark of his oeuvre.
Utilizing expressive geometry to distort traditional figurative motifs, Condo continues to explore his approach to figurative painting that stylistically blends the representational and the abstract that he established in the 1980s. It is then that he coined the terms ‘psychological cubism’ and ‘artificial realism’, which reference his personal melange of art historical styles. An admitted disciple of great artists that came before him, Condo has found particular influence in Pablo Picasso—the Cubist master painter looked to his peers as well when developing his singular style. Condo applies a Cubist.mes thodology not only to form but to mental states, in effect fracturing the picture plane as well as the message and energy that comes across. As the artist has said, “Picasso painted a violin from four different perspectives at one moment. I do the same with psychological states.” Because of this devotion paired with innovation, Condo’s body of work is rife with a deep knowledge of art history and canonical references, allowing him to produce work that is historically storied yet indisputably and unapologetically his own.
