“Since surfacing on the East Village art scene in the early 1980s, George Condo’s career has never been short of attention. He worked in Andy Warhol’s ‘Factory,’ designed an album cover for Kanye West and invented his own visual language, ‘Artificial Realism.’ He introduced a new mode of figurative painting to the world: bulgy-eyed, contorted-limbed characters that are at once monstrous, poignant and psychologically searing”
D renched in satire and eccentricity, George Condo’s Portrait of an Elegant Woman from 2007 represents the paradigm of the artist’s radical approach to portraiture. Overflowing with an immediacy of pathos and gravity, Portrait of an Elegant Woman captures Condo’s ingenious aesthetic approach that harnesses the traditions of European portraiture while skillfully incorporating a Contemporary twist of Surrealist and Pop. Wholly enchanting, the female figure gazes at the viewer with an utter coolness to her expression, the pale cerulean eyes quietly reflecting the light across the surface of the impressive canvas. In the present work, the serene expression is framed by zany baby blue toned eyeshadow and framed by dizzyingly dark ringlets of hair, while the subject's eyebrows are cocked in a spry and daring demeanor. The facial vocabulary in Portrait of an Elegant Woman is elevated even further, with the comic elongation of the neck and lower lip, and goofy teeth punctuated by ballooned rosy cheeks. The outrageous physical proportions in Portrait of an Elegant Woman, and even the title itself, are juxtaposed with the muted and traditional garment adorned that adorns the figure.
Enigmatic and arresting, Portrait of an Elegant Woman demonstrates the tension that Condo creates between the beuty of the painted surface and the outlandish features o his subject. His intricate brushwork captures the dignified and majestic pose of the subject, with the deep décolletage and rich layering and cross-hatching in the background paying homage to the influence of Rennaissance masters, but the figure herself is imbued with a surprising, irreverent humor. The anatomical improbabilities of the chin, cheeks, teeth and saucer-like ears are disquieting but ultiamtely visually compelling, and together these elements position Portrait of an Elegant Woman as the apotheosis of Condo’s radical practice.
“George Condo has explored the outer suburbs of acceptability while making pictures that, for all their outrageous humor, are deeply immersed in memories of European and American traditions of painting.”
Portrait of an Elegant Woman is entirely fresh to market and has remained in the same esteemed private collects ion of Sherry and Joel Mallin, since they first acquired it from Skarstedt Gallery. Known for their prescient eye for quality and visionary style of collects ing, the selection of Portrait of an Elegant Woman by the Mallins demonstrates the undeniable quality of the present work as a standout example from one of Condo’s most celebrated periods of production.
