George Condo
The Way I Think
The Phillips presents a survey of drawings and paintings by George Condo (b. 1957, Concord, New Hampshire), a prolific painter whose career spans three decades and is best known for his rich pictorial inventions, existential humor, and imaginative portraits that incorporate a hybridization of art-historical influences, such as Goya, Velázquez, Manet, Picasso, and Guston.
George Condo: The Way I Think
George Condo, Untitled (2003)
George Condo, Double Heads Drawing 10 (2015)
George Condo, Red and Black Compression (2011)
George Condo, Spanish Head Composition (1988)
George Condo, Jean Louis on Green (c. 2008)
George Condo, The Wedding Pianist (1998)
Working in New York and Paris (where he lived from 1985 to 1995), Condo has long challenged the primacy of painting over drawing. He has never considered painting as fulfillment of his drawing’s promise. It is in his drawings that his process of “painting memory” (the title of a course he taught at Harvard University) becomes most undisguised—where he relies on the mind and the imagination to take a “snapshot” rather than photographic material, splits his imaginary subjects into a kind of “psychological cubism,” and allows figurative compositions to be “infested” with abstraction.
This exhibition of more than 200 drawings and sketches and eight “drawing paintings” allow visitors unprecedented insight into the mind and creative process of this extraordinarily imaginative artist.
The exhibition is organized by The Phillips Collection.
With support from the Paula Ballo Dailey Memorial Fund.