Picasso painted a violin from four different perspectives at one moment. I do the same with psychological states. Four of them can occur simultaneously. Like glimpsing a bus with one passenger howling over a joke they're hearing down the phone, someone else asleep, someone else crying – I'll put them all in one face.
E manating strident intensity and psychological depth, Whistler’s Father wholly embodies the irrefutable beauty, conceptual gravitas, and unparalleled technical finesse which characterize the very best of George Condo’s celebrated oeuvre. Executed in 2019, the present work deftly synergizes the traditionally separate processes of drawing and painting in single, fluid gestural expression; while the extraordinarily dense and complex configuration of the fragmented portrait represents a brilliant fusion of his trademark brand of ‘psychological Cubism’ and his commitment to constantly pushing the boundaries that separate figurative and abstract painting. A rich optical puzzle spliced by overlapping forms and charcoal lines, the painting draws from the established custom of the portrait, featuring a figure truncated below the shoulders in the manner traditional to Italian Renaissance portraiture. Under Condo’s masterful draftsmanship akin to choreography, the figure’s human features clash, churn and collide in a prodigious yet whimsical riddle. An enormous range of human emotion is on display across this spectrum of figures; joy, terror, hilarity, fury, and ecstasy collide in a chaotic yet elegant cacophony of forms that bridges the gap between an emotional state and a physical reality. As a finishing touch, the figure is hinted to be donning the iconic black-and-white striped shirt – a nod to Picasso and Warhol, who were often photographed in the Breton shirt – rendering Whistler’s Father a special portrait in line with the very best of Condo’s universally acclaimed oeuvre.
Following a nine-month stint as the diamond duster in Andy Warhol’s infamous Factory, George Condo emerged onto the 1980s New York art scene at the eager age of twenty-three alongside seminal figures Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, the latter of whom is stated to have officially convinced Condo to pursue a career as a professional artist. Like Haring and Basquiat, Condo was critically engaged throughout the eighties in the inauguration of a new form of figurative painting that stylistically blended the representational and the abstract.Condo coined the terms ‘artificial realism’ and ‘psychological cubism’ to define his hybridization of art historical influences, specifically his fusion of the Old Master subject matter with the distorted geometric perspectives of Cubism. Through a prolific output of compelling yet grotesque portraits, Condo established himself by the turn of the century as one of the preeminent figurative painters of the contemporary era; his method of extrapolating and distorting traditional figurative motifs through an abstract lens has influenced an entire generation of artists working today.
Displaying an unprecedented creative fervor of spontaneous mark-making, the present work departs from Condo’s more carefully planned portrait paintings toward a reckless embrace of the sketchy grit inherent in the alloyed mediums of sooty charcoal and pastel carved into wet acrylic. Whistler’s Father revels in the unforeseen beauty and wildly alluring entropy of Condo’s improvisational genius. The painting represents an extension of Condo’s continued series of Drawing Paintings in which he synergizes the traditionally separate processes of drawing and painting into one fluid gestural expression. Commenting on the paintings in this series, Condo says, “They are about freedom of line and color and blur the distinction between drawing and painting. They are about beauty and horror walking hand in hand. They are about improvisation on the human figure and its consciousness” (the artist in “George Condo: Drawing Paintings,” Skarstedt Gallery, 4 November 2011).
The present work thus marvels in Condo’s intellectual game that obfuscates and blurs the traditional delineations between drawing and painting, finished and unfinished, balanced and unbalanced, and flat two-dimensionality versus sculptural depth. The gracefully churning collision of forms is perhaps one of the most honest and accurate representations of a complicated modern psychology: teeth, glee, rage, smiles, insanity, cheeks, loneliness, and eyes crushed together in an almost unbearable state of being. Condo has established himself in the canon of Western art history as a master puppeteer of the human psyche, presenting to his audience forms that delight and repulse, amuse and sadden, welcome and alienate. His unraveling and subsequent reassembly of various pictorial languages has cemented him as one of today’s most clever and cutting-edge contemporary painters. As Holland Cotter notes in his review of George Condo: Mental States at the New Museum in 2011: “Mr. Condo is not a producer of single precious items consistent in style and long in the making. If that’s what you want from painting, he’ll disappoint you. He’s an artist of variety, plentitude and multiformity. He needs to be seen in an environment that presents him not as a virtuoso soloist but as the master of the massed chorale.” (Holland Carter, “A Mind Where Picasso Meets Looney Tunes,” The New York Times, January 27, 2011). Exuding a mystifyingly psychological aura with gorgeous permutations of line, color, and form, Whistler’s Father endures as a stunning reminder of Condo’s elusive genius in the act of abstraction.
「畢加索曾經從四個不同角度來畫一把小提琴。我筆下的心理狀態也是這樣。四種狀態可以同時發生。 就像瞥見一輛公共汽車，一名乘客因在電話中聽到笑話而嚎叫，有人睡著了，有人在哭 —— 我會把它們全部放在同一張臉上。」
喬 治·康多的藝術作品廣受推崇，以無容置疑的美感、鏗鏘有力的概念和無與倫比的技巧見著，《惠斯勒的父親》的筆觸強烈而深刻，感染著觀者的情緒，完美地體現出這些特質 。本作完成於 2019 年，以一氣呵成的流暢表達手法，將傳統上素描與油畫創作兩個獨立的工序，巧妙地化成一體，充滿力量及動感；《惠斯勒的父親》把單一肖像解構成不同細部，，精微而出眾，完美融合了他為人樂道的「 心理立體主義」，體現了突破抽具象界限的不懈努力。這張由重疊的形狀和炭筆線條拼接而成的人像拼圖，靈感源自肖像畫的既定傳統，以意大利文藝復興肖像畫的傳統方式將肩膀以下的部份截斷。在康多如編舞般的精湛佈局之下，畫中人的各種人類特徵互相衝突、蠕動、碰撞，構成出人意表而又異想天開的謎語。各樣的情緒在這一系列人物當中一一呈現：歡樂、恐怖、歡鬧、暴怒和狂喜在混沌而優雅的形式喧鬧中碰撞，彌合了情感狀態和物理現實之間的鴻溝。而作品畫龍點睛的一筆，是人物穿著標誌性的黑白條紋襯衫，這彷彿向經常穿著布列塔尼襯衫拍照的畢加索和沃霍爾致敬，使《惠斯勒的父親》成為了康多藝術創作歷程中的精煉之作。
康多曾在安迪•沃荷的工廠當過九個月鑽石塵掃塵員；1980年代，他以二十三歲的初犢之齡在紐約藝壇嶄露頭角，同期大師還有凱斯•哈林及尚•米榭•巴斯基亞，據聞正是後者說服康多以藝術為事業。跟哈林及巴斯基亞一樣，康多在80年代積極提倡一種結合具象及抽象風格的具象繪畫新形式。康多創造了「人為現實主義」和「 心理立體主義」兩個術語來定義他融合各種藝術歷史風格的創作手法，特別是他融合古典油畫題材與立體主義扭曲幾何視角的創舉。通過多幅引人入勝而又詭異怪誕的肖像畫，康多在世紀之交確立作為當代傑出具像畫家的地位；他通過抽象鏡頭推斷和扭曲傳統具像創作動機的手法，對當今一整代藝術家影響深遠。
康多以灰黑炭筆和粉彩繪畫於未乾透的壓克力上，呈現出粗獷隨心的氣質，與他之前以事先精心計劃構圖的創作風格截然不同，畫中線條隨創作者心念揮灑流動，其中自由而發的創作熱情前所未見。《惠斯勒的父親》不僅彰顯康多的即興才思，更洋溢一種前所未見的獨特美感，是康多的優秀代表作，而且也是他「素描油畫」系列的延伸。後者以統一流暢的動態表達手法，巧妙地揉合傳統上互相獨立的素描與油畫創作過程。康多曾經如此評論該系列作品說：「這些作品關乎線條與色彩的自由，使素描與油畫的特徵變得模糊，美麗與驚恐攜手共行。它們亦關乎人體的即興及其意識。」（喬治·康多，引述自：Skarstedt 畫廊，〈喬治·康多：素描油畫〉，二○一一年十一月四日）
本作令觀者驚嘆康多的心理遊戲，它模糊了素描與油畫、完成與未完成、平衡與失衡以及平面二維與雕塑深度之間的傳統分野。其中形式上的優雅翻騰碰撞也許是複雜現代心理誠實和準確的表現：牙齒、歡樂、憤怒、微笑、精神錯亂、臉頰、孤獨和眼睛在幾乎無法忍受的狀態下擠壓在一起。在西方藝術史的經典當中，康多奠定了自己作為人類心靈木偶大師的地位，向觀者同時展示愉悅和反感、發笑和傷悲、歡迎和疏遠等情感。他重新組合各種繪畫語言，使他成為現今睿智前衛的當代畫家。正如霍蘭德·科特2011 年對康多的評論（《喬治・康多：新博物館的心理狀態》）中所指出：「康多的作品不是花長時間生產風格一致且製作需時的貴重物品。 如果這是你想從畫中得到的，他恐怕會讓你失望了。他是一位多才多藝、多棲多產的藝術家。他需要在一種環境中被看到，（這種環境）需要將他呈現為大型合唱的指揮，而非炫技的獨奏家。」（霍蘭德·科特，畢加索遇見魯尼曲調的心靈”，《紐約時報》，2011 年 1 月 27 日）。《惠斯勒的父親》散發出一種神秘的心理光環，線條、顏色和形式的排列華麗非凡，印證他透過抽象藝術創作，成就一代曠世奇才。