26 Stations of a Life The Great Schizoid Samstag / Saturday, 19. Nov. 2016

1 Paul Cézanne Montagne Sainte-Victoire mit großer Pinie / Montagne Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine 1885–1887 G e o r g e C o n d o . 67 × 92 cm / 26 ⅓ × 36 ⅓ in. Öl auf Leinwand / oil on canvas Courtauld Institute of Art, Stations of a Life © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London

2 George Condo Standing Blue Figure with Black Cape 1995 Babette Marie Werner 183 × 172.5 cm / 72 × 68 in. Öl auf Leinwand / oil on canvas Privatsammlung / Private Collection © vg Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016, Foto: © George Condo 2016 3 George Condo Red Antipodular Agent Portrait 1996 C o n c o r d , C h e l m sf o r d , ­L o w e l l , 152.5 × 122 cm / 60 × 48 in. Öl auf Leinwand / oil on canvas Privatsammlung / Private Collection ­B o s t o n , N e w Y o r k , L o s A n g e l e s , © vg Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016, Foto: © George Condo 2016 1957–1982 4 George Condo Artificial Love II 1984 50 × 40 cm / 20 × 16 in. Öl auf Leinwand / oil on canvas Sammlung des Künstlers / Collection of the Artist © vg Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016, Foto: © George Condo 2016 Art and athletics

5 Book of Sketches New York 2006 George Condo was born in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1957. Cover: George Condo, 2006 His creative talent is evident early on: even as a child he draws © vg Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016, Foto: © David von Becker 2016 and paints whenever he can. His head brims with “shapes and 6 George Condo Dancing to Miles 1985/86 peaks and personalities locked up in a cage, and minds and 280 × 350 cm / 110 ¼ × 137 ¾ in. Öl auf Leinwand / oil on canvas thoughts and ideas trying to escape.”1 Surrounded, for a long The Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles © vg Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016 time, by his own pictures, he eventually discovers the works of others who came before him—they become his heroes. As 7 George Condo The Psychoanalytic Puppeteer Losing His Mind 1994 200 × 150 cm / 78 ¾ × 59 in. Öl auf Leinwand / oil on canvas a teenager, he absorbs everything he can get his hands on. Privatsammlung / Private Collection Growing up amid cows and farms in , a small town © vg Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016, Foto: © George Condo 2016 outside Lowell, he browses stores that sell books on art as well 8 George Condo Poster von / of The Girls New Years Eve 1979 as poster prints of paintings he reveres. Inquisitive and eager Sammlung des Künstlers / Collection of the Artist to learn, he pores over reproductions of original works, and he © vg Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016, Foto: © George Condo 2016 paints. He seizes every opportunity to visit museums and see 9 My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy originals. The teenage Condo has a print of a painting by Paul 10 George Condo The Objective Idealist 1994 Def Jam Recordings 2010 Cover: George Condo Kanye and the Phoenix 2010 Cézanne from the Montagne Sainte-Victoire series (1885–1896; © vg Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016, Foto: © David von Becker 2016 fig. 1) hanging above his bed and, next to it, a poster of a “great 2 10 George Condo The Objective Idealist 1994 Cubist painting.” And what about sports? Like every good 101.5 × 76 cm / 40 × 30 in. Öl auf Leinwand / oil on canvas American kid, Condo and his older brother try out for the Little Music Privatsammlung / Private Collection © vg Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016, Foto: © George Condo 2016 League team. But when the new recruits for the baseball team In 1972, Condo reads John Cage’s Silence (1961), a collection are selected, he gets passed over. His parents are so concerned of essays laying out a theory of perception that has a profound 11 George Condo Big Red 1996/97 they even call the coach in the evening, only to learn that there 244 × 213.5 cm / 96 × 84 in. Öl auf Leinwand / oil on canvas influence on him. After graduating from high school, he enrolls Privatsammlung / Private Collection has been no misunderstanding: unfortunately, they “don’t have at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell (1976–1978), where © vg Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016, Foto: © George Condo 2016 any room for him on the team.” 3 Condo’s lack of athletic talent he studies music theory and art history. Only two years later, 12 George Condo Diaries of Milan 1984 seals his fate: without further ado, his mother enrolls him in he leaves without a degree to move to the big city. In , he 187 × 203 cm / 73 ½ × 80 in. Öl auf Leinwand / oil on canvas an art class, and sports will be something he watches from the attends evening drawing classes at the Massachusetts College Foto: © 2016. The , New York / Scala, Florence © vg Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016 sidelines. A traumatic turn in young Condo’s life? A stroke of of Art and earns a living working odd jobs—the experience he good fortune—for the budding artist has long discovered his gains in a silkscreen printing shop stands him in good stead when, 13 George Condo und Jean-Christophe Maillot vor einem von Condo gestalteten Bühnenbild für Opus 40, Ballett von Maillot mit Musik von true passion: painting! And that is not all: literature and music, a few years later, he is hired for ’s Factory in New Meredith Monk, 2000 / George Condo and Jean-Christophe Maillot too, have entered his world. York. In 1981, he writes copy for Warhol and works on silkscreens before Condo‘s stage design for Opus 40, a ballet by Maillot with music by Meredith Monk, 2000 such as the famous Myths cycle, but rarely sees the famous artist; they do not become acquainted until 1986. Condo’s passions for 14 George Condo The Executive 2003 Literature music and artistic experimentation lead him to join the Boston 61 × 50.8 cm / 24 × 20 in. Öl auf Leinwand / oil on canvas Privatsammlung / Private Collection In 1962, Condo first encounters the writings of the Beat poet avant-garde punk band The Girls in 1978, where he plays the bass. © vg Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016, Foto: © George Condo 2016 Jack Kerouac, whose technique of spontaneous prose he will Founded by Daved Hild, The Girls tour the clubs of the East Coast 15 George Condo Last Days of Enron 2004 later translate into his painterly practice (cf. the End of Bank and at one point open for Gray, the band of the artist Jean-Michel 117 × 122 cm / 46 × 48 in. Öl auf Leinwand / oil on canvas Street, 2016; p. 16).4 The acquaintance, in the late 1980s, with Basquiat, with whom Condo strikes up a friendship. Many of his Privatsammlung / Private Collection © vg Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016, Foto: © George Condo 2016 Kerouac’s erstwhile close associate William S. Burroughs marks paintings are inspired by musical elements: for instance, working the beginning of an extended collaboration between the two: they in his friend ’s studio, he creates Dancing to Miles make art together (The Horse and the Cardinal, 1992), and Condo (1985–1986; fig. 6). Years later, the Jazz Paintings series combines illustrates Burroughs’s short story “Ghost of a Chance” (1991).5 reflections of his enthusiasm for the abstract art of Wassily Aldous Huxley’s philosophical essay Heaven and Hell, published Kandinsky, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and others in 1956, describes figures and objects originating in the depths with details lifted from record covers. In 2010, Condo designs of the soul as “the mind’s antipodes,” absurd and grotesque the cover for the American musician Kanye West’s single Power. antagonists of rationality that represent nothing but themselves.6 Five paintings he creates for West’s album My Beautiful Dark Condo later adopts this notion for his figures, and from 1995 on, Twisted Fantasy cause a minor scandal: Kanye and the Phoenix he follows Huxley in calling them “antipodal beings” or “pods.” (fig. 9), for example, shows the rap star having sex with a winged His faceless “metaphysical mannequins,” such as Standing Blue female demon. A little too much Condo for the American music Figure with Black Cape (1995; fig. 2), are gradually transmuted industry? The album becomes a collector’s item. In 1979, Condo into such “antipodal beings,” which may be read as humorous abandons his fledgling career as a musician in order to devote personifications of the artist’s fantasies and perceptions; the himself entirely to fine art and moves to New York, where, in incipient iconographic shift is recognizable in Red Antipodular 1980, he visits an exhibition of Pablo Picasso’s art at the Museum Agent Portrait (1996; fig. 3).7 Conversely, one of Condo’s figures, The Psychoanalytic Puppeteer Losing His Mind (1994; fig. 7), is behind a character in ’s novel Fury (2001).8 In 2006, Condo returns to his literary roots: he pens an introduction to Jack Kerouac’s Book of Sketches, a posthumous edition of selections from the writer’s notebooks, and designs the cover (fig. 5). The book sparks the artist’s exchange of ideas with the writer Daniel Kehlmann, who, in 2016, publishes a story titled “Faces, Grimaces, Condo”9 inspired by Condo’s fantastic realms.

8 George Condo The Girls New Years Eve 1979 9 Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 2010 11 George Condo Big Red 1996/97 Samstag / Saturday, 19. Nov. 2016 The Great Schizoid Stations of a Life 27

14 George Condo The Executive 2003

12 George Condo Diaries of Milan 1984 of Modern Art. It is the largest selection of works he has seen to , 1985–1994 date by the Spanish master, whose irrepressible creative energy has a profound and lasting influence on him. But his thirst for In 1985, Condo moves yet again, though this time he will stay new impressions is not yet quenched: in 1982, he moves to Los a little longer. Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat are Angeles—as far away as possible from the New York arts scene. regular visitors during his first years in Paris, and he conversely In California, he undertakes a study of the techniques and themes visits them back home. Condo paints and creates his first series of the Old Masters and creates The Madonna (1982; pl. 2), a key of three-dimensional works, figurative sculptures he makes painting in which the basic features of his mature work come into out of found objects. And he devotes himself to the study of view. American painting in the 1980s, Condo believes, surely the Old Masters and modernist painters in the museums of Paris. Additional solo exhibitions and participations in major does not need some kind of “New Image Painting”: what the art 15 George Condo Last Days of Enron 2004 world needs are “fake Old Masters”! 10 And so that is what he sets group shows consolidate his reputation on the international 12 out to deliver—his own interpretation of the history of painting. stage. In 1994, he extends the Imaginary Portraits series; new elements include the pompous apparel in which he dresses States, touring New York, Rotterdam, London, and Frankfurt his figures and the faceless mannequin heads in works such as am Main in 2011–2012, introduces wide audiences in the United Cologne, 1983–1984 The Objective Idealist (1994) and Cocktails in Space (1996). States and Europe to the artist’s diverse oeuvre. Over the years, Then, suddenly, everything happens at once! Condo has met Condo has developed a distinctive style replete with quotations Walter Dahn and Jiří Georg Dokoupil, members of the Cologne New York, 1995– from art history that combines the visual idioms of the masters artists’ group Mülheimer Freiheit, and so, in 1983, he decamps who inspired him with a wide range of painterly techniques and for the city on the Rhine. The nine months he spends there are a In 1995, Condo returns to New York for good. The film representational registers from the past several centuries. With 13 period of feverish experimentation that sets his evolution as an Condo Painting, released by USA Films in 2000, tells the sly humor, his work blends contraries such as abstraction and artist on a new course. The clown motif in his work is inspired story of Big Red (1996–1997), one of the artist’s best-known figuration, the absurd and the serious, the grotesque and the by the famous carnival celebrations: see, for instance, Artificial “antipodal beings.” That same year, he designs costumes and beautiful. Love (1983; cf. fig. 4). It is also in Cologne that Condo develops the stage scenery for Les Ballets de Monte Carlo’s production his idea of Artificial Realism: the realistic depiction of the of Opus 40, a ballet by Jean-Christophe Maillot with music by artificial and the artificial depiction of the real. He later extends Meredith Monk (fig. ). Condo begins work on a new series of the concept to Picasso’s synthetic Cubism as well as works by bronze sculptures inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s Birth of artists including Stuart Davis, Jeff Koons, James Rosenquist, Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872) as well as his careful and Andy Warhol.11 Monika Sprüth mounts a show of Condo’s study of the proportions of classical antiquity (2001–2002). 1 Simon Baker, George Condo. Painting Reconfigured, London 2015, 7. work in her gallery in Cologne, his first solo exhibition in The events of September 11, 2001 and the first foreshocks of the 2 George Condo in conversation with , New York, April 15, international financial crisis, starting with the collapse of the 2004, in: Thomas Kellein (ed.), George Condo. One Hundred Women, exh. cat. Europe: Bilder—Zeichnungen (1984). On a trip to Milan, he Museum der Moderne Salzburg, 3/12–5/29/2005; Bielefeld, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, paints the firstExpanding Canvas: Diaries of Milan (1984; energy giant Enron, not only change the political world, they 6/19–8/14/2005, Ostfildern-Ruit 2005, 29. fig. 12). The earliest Name Paintings, including The Cloudmaker also leave traces in Condo’s art: social critique and political 3 George Condo in conversation with Udo Kittelmann, New York, March 21, 2016, in these pages, p. 1. (1984; fig. 4, p. 22; pl. 5), are created during a stay in Tenerife. motifs begin to appear in his paintings. The Executive (2003; fig. 14) — with a carrot dangling in front of his nose — and 4 See ibid., 16–17. 5 The exhibition The Horse and the Cardinal. George Condo and William Homeless Harlequins (2004) exemplify the new themes his art S. Burroughs. Collaborative Works 1988–1996 is shown at the Pat Hearn Gallery, explores, questioning society’s “radical conservatism” and the New York, in 1997. trinity of faith, work, and family.14 In 2004, he begins work on 6 Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, New York 1963, 83–84. the Orgy Paintings: taking inspiration from Henri de Toulouse- 7 Cf. Baker, Painting Reconfigured, 77. Lautrec, Edgar Degas, and Paul Cézanne, he paints Last 8 Salman Rushdie, Fury, London 2001, 161–168. 15 Days of Enron (2004; fig. 15) and The Orgy (2005). Painting 9 See in the present catalogue. Memory is the title of a six-month course Condo teaches at 10 Baker, Painting Reconfigured, 7. that year, in which he encouraged his 11 See ibid., 53; George Condo in conversation with Ralph Rugoff, New York, March 14, 2006, in: Lutz Eitel (ed.): George Condo. Existential Portraits: students to paint without relying on photographic sources: Sculpture, Drawings, Paintings 2005–2006, exh. cat., Luhring Augustine, New “By recalling these images in your mind, you can then paint York, 5/5.-6/3/2006, Berlin 2006, 7–13, 8. them, give them a physical presence, in much the way that an 12 First solo show in London, Waddington Galleries, 1986; participation in Allegories of Modernism. Contemporary Drawing, The Museum of Modern Art, artist copies a photograph, only in this case you’re transcribing New York, 16.2 – 5.5.1992. 16 a mental phenomenon.” One year later, he launches the 13 Directed by John McNaughton, script by George Condo and John McNaughton, Existential Portraits series: surrounded by his housekeeper, cast: Patrick Achdjian, William S. Burroughs, Anna Condo and . 14 See Ralph Rugoff and Max Hollein (eds.), George Condo. Mental States, exh. cat. chauffeur, chef, mistress, and mother-in-law, Jean Louis, the , New York, 1/26–5/8/2011; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, ensemble’s protagonist, appears in several paintings. In 2010, Rotterdam, 6/25–9/25/2011; Hayward Gallery, London, 10/18/2011–1/8/2012; Condo tries his hand at something completely new, creating Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt a. M., 2/22–5/28/2012, Verona 2012, 166. 15 Cf. Baker, Painting Reconfigured, 227. masks based on his own characters for the fashion designer 16 George Condo in conversation with Ralph Rugoff, New York, March 14, 2006, 13 George Condo und / and Jean-Christophe Maillot, 2000 Adam Kimmel’s Casino Collection. The retrospective Mental in: Eitel, George Condo. Existential Portraits, 11.