‘I try to depict a character’s train of thoughts simultaneously – hysteria, joy, sadness, desperation…If you could see these things at once that would be like what I’m trying to make you see in my art’
Rendered in a light blue pastel pencil sketch, the present lot, Reflecting Nude, was executed in 2007 and features a female figure who wistfully looks off into the distance. The woman depicted is half dressed in a sheer flouncy cape which shows her breasts and, in typical Condo-esque fashion, wears fishnet stockings. However, the work steps away from Condo’s usual premise: that all things are equal and organised non-hierarchically, as in his cubist pictures. In this work, there is one central shapely nude figure who commands the attention of the viewer, anchored by soft lines which render her form and create a privately intimate scene. Her serene expression and delicate features cast an aura of melancholy and differs from his usual trope of snarling grimaces, furrowed brows and loud, frenzied backgrounds.
Condo draws from the past, while simultaneously reworking it to create a complex web of meaning. The present work sees Condo engage with the tradition of the female nude painting through the model’s positioning as well as through the title of the work itself. Reflecting Nude includes the characteristic elements of sexuality, eroticism and aesthetic that feature in any nude. However, Condo deliberately subverts the classical idealising through granting the sitter agency; her delicate fingers rest above her genitalia, perhaps as a gesture of eroticism or shielding herself from the viewer.
Coming of age in New York in the early 1980s, Condo worked in Andy Warhol’s Factory, primarily in the silkscreen department applying diamond dust to Warhol’s Myth series. Alongside Keith Haring and Jean-Michele Basquiat, Condo was instrumental in the international revival of painting. As a key figure in the New York art scene, his works exude a complex psychological essence which reworks traditional portraiture while plumbing the depths of figurative painting. His unique approach to portraiture painting saw him coin the term ‘Artificial Realism’, a style of painting which borrows from the European traditions and fuses popular American pop sensibilities.
Condo has established himself within the canon of art history as a master of surrealist archetypal figures. Characterised by an irreverent lexicon of ghoulish yet comedic characters, he succeeds in creating a subversive parody and yet psychologically complex narrative.