Condo Painting 1999-USA-Biography N.Y. Times Review by A. O. Scott PLOT DESCRIPTION In this documentary, director John McNaughton, famous (or infamous) for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990), draws an intimate portrait of the painter George Condo, a friend of William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Born in 1957, Condo has been called the high priest of "artificial realism," which he defines as a "realistic representation of something that's artificial." The film also shows Condo at work in his Manhattan studio; it was shot with a High-8 (non-digital) home video camera which gave McNaughton the freedom of movement to capture close-ups of brush movements and other minute details. It was later transferred to 35mm. There is also footage of Burroughs and Ginsberg in Condo's studio shortly before they both died. Condo Painting is quite different from McNaughton's other work, which stretches from science fiction and live theatre documentaries to such star-studded studio features as Mad Dog and Glory to TV series such as Homicide and the 1998 sex thriller, Wild Things. Condo Painting was screened as part of the Filmmakers of the Present section in the 1999 Locarno International Film Festival. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide
It's always a pleasure to see a Condo show... he always delivers, and this one was no exception. Definitely a must-see show. My only reservation is about the way he deals with faces; there's a standard goofy clown/monster face with googly eyes that he uses over and over again; it works as a mask -- it means he doesn't really have to deal with painting an actual face. It also acts as a kind of punchline for the painting & pulls the rug out from under -- which is fine, and I'm sure what he intends, but for me the sameness from painting to painting is a little unsatisfying & distracting. That said, there were some real knockout paintings in this show; the guy is a real master.
I am salivating to see this show. Strangeness, strangeness, strangeness, all with little painting moves. It's funny, I always WANT to love Yuskavage's paintings, but find them illustrative and tame, paint-wise, compared to these. In these, unforgettable painting moments carry the meaning more than anything else. Oh, his pearly teeth, all in a creepy row against that terrible purple! The stripe-y bits of his shirt, all triangular-like. The triangle of his lower jaw. MORE TEETH. He's like a blue-eyed naive dinosaur baby. He's not at all smart.
just a little criticism....for me there is something contrived about the little portraits in the hallway... perhaps too obviously zeroing in on the "idea" of portrait or caricature... that combined with the easel-sized canvases and old masterish frames feels beneath condo somehow. his paint handling is so incredible - the best - but for me the presentation of these feels too awkwardly faux-current. maybe i'm being too hard on him because he's one of my very favorite painters.
Have to see this show. I like the jpegs on the gallery site. It's funny how they remind me of Dana Schultz. They also remind me of Picasso a lot as does a lot of his work. His sense of humor is very welcome in the art world. There is this psychological edge in his work that doesn't seem to rest. Just look at Symphony I, 2005.
i will try to hunt down a copy for you blueblaz i had it at one point, aired on tv.. i was not a fan at all until i saw it to tell you the truth now i am huge! he is the real deal. & j waters was out front of the opening.
Tres conceptual - there's a blandness to the STYLE of condo - and to the preceeding images...in the tradition of pop - blending of corporate illustrational vanilla.
You saw a lot of this sort of style in the nineties - in annula reports and financial brochures.
Kostabi is annoyingly ingratiating with his corporate schtick.
I feel about this painting the way I felt watching the movie ET, where everyone else loved it and I hated the creature so much I walked out. Must be powerful art. I'm trying to like it. Can't yet.
Zipthwung, I'd lump Condo into the editorial category if the work weren't so intrinsically PAINTED, but it is painted. Just look at the purple! Can't wait for this one since the last show was so good.
see the movie, i will hunt it down again... he has a special majkic little world that these creatures are from. not kastobi at all. the other side of the coin.
very true, bunko this is a very very simple sketch... but i like to say put this posting window above the face and look at the architecture of the space below the character and think, - do they relate? could i be missing something?
I like some of the other paintings in this show. I don't really care for this painting though. The mouth throws me off. I don't like the clown faces either but for the most part he is a great painter in a period when great painting is hard to come by. I mean there are great painters out there but for the most part most consider it to be dead. I think it and sculpture are the only true art forms. Video and conceptual art are so trendy and lack substance. Sometimes it works but for the most part its crapola.
i think painting and sculpture are to established and just considered "art" by default, pre-cannonised. in a markets market these days! - OF COURSE there are the dimonds but you got to be good in video or conceptual art in the real world to keep it going..
Well all painting isnt good but to me video and installation art are gimmicks. If done well it can be a great thing but it usually falls short. I did see an installation on the Holocaust a few years back that was really good and a few other things in between. When I was in Chicago recently I saw a piece on Samuel Beckett that I didnt really care for. The idea of it was ok but the piece itself fell on its face. Anyone from Chicago out there?
hey! thats big red - cool... i did phish tour for a while they were preformace artists at one point. i would not say album covers are 'illustration' i don't think that way of mike kelly, richard Prince or say Howard Finster
"I think the influence this artist has had on the work of younger artists like Dana Shutz and Lamar Peterson is quite obvious. "
Quite obvious. THe influence of Picasso still resonates, too. I am a huge admirer of Picasso, ever since I saw the Matisse Picasso show at the MOMA, Queens.
At htat show I saw that the tow were having a conversation. I realized that they really had something going on.
i just wanted to go on record as being someone who despises Condo's work. I think this painting is horrible. I hate this work more than I hate Carol Dunham's work.
I had Dunham walking through my studio that I shared with other students back in the day. I remember him checking my paintings out and not really saying anything. He seems like a very intellectual dude which his paintings don't necessarily scream. I can't really say I like his paintings either. They are really easy paintings to hate maybe because they are SO obvious, at least to me, about the ID and our ugly side. He paints like a fucked-up child. Maybe it's this fucked-up side of ourselves that I hate and not his work. I can't decide. But he picked Banks Violette for his first show ever while at school and I can see why, now, that he picked him. By the way, Condo rocks, what's to hate?
!!!! Also, Painter, we, painters, get inspired by other stuff besides just paintings. I'd like to see comments on 3D and film too.....!!!!
It's slick, it's cynical, if it weren't for the luscious purple it would be a bad cartoon. Irony is too easy. It's an excuse for failing to engage. Can we step back from ourselves for one second and look at what we've become, as a society and as a community of artists, when we take this kind of ugly, lifeless stuff seriously? Are we apprehending the real world at all, or just our take on someone's take on someone's take on something tired and arcane to begin with?
This guy is a seriously good artist and this show is great. His achilles heel is that he sometimes lets too much out of his studio by that I mean the less good ones will be shown amung the very good ones thus dilluting the whole. But in the end that's what enthusiastic artists do, they are sometimes the last to know what's good and what's not. i.e. the small paintings in the hall, too silly?
38 comments:
George Condo @
Luhring Augustine
531 West 24th Street,
New York, NY 10011
Tel: 1-212-206-9100
Condo Painting
1999-USA-Biography
N.Y. Times Review by A. O. Scott
PLOT DESCRIPTION
In this documentary, director John McNaughton, famous (or infamous) for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990), draws an intimate portrait of the painter George Condo, a friend of William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Born in 1957, Condo has been called the high priest of "artificial realism," which he defines as a "realistic representation of something that's artificial." The film also shows Condo at work in his Manhattan studio; it was shot with a High-8 (non-digital) home video camera which gave McNaughton the freedom of movement to capture close-ups of brush movements and other minute details. It was later transferred to 35mm. There is also footage of Burroughs and Ginsberg in Condo's studio shortly before they both died. Condo Painting is quite different from McNaughton's other work, which stretches from science fiction and live theatre documentaries to such star-studded studio features as Mad Dog and Glory to TV series such as Homicide and the 1998 sex thriller, Wild Things. Condo Painting was screened as part of the Filmmakers of the Present section in the 1999 Locarno International Film Festival. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide
love it. liked the last show better, and not so crazy about the frames on these....a little trendy, right? but the paintings are always amazing.
It's always a pleasure to see a Condo show... he always delivers, and this one was no exception. Definitely a must-see show. My only reservation is about the way he deals with faces; there's a standard goofy clown/monster face with googly eyes that he uses over and over again; it works as a mask -- it means he doesn't really have to deal with painting an actual face. It also acts as a kind of punchline for the painting & pulls the rug out from under -- which is fine, and I'm sure what he intends, but for me the sameness from painting to painting is a little unsatisfying & distracting. That said, there were some real knockout paintings in this show; the guy is a real master.
I am salivating to see this show. Strangeness, strangeness, strangeness, all with little painting moves. It's funny, I always WANT to love Yuskavage's paintings, but find them illustrative and tame, paint-wise, compared to these. In these, unforgettable painting moments carry the meaning more than anything else. Oh, his pearly teeth, all in a creepy row against that terrible purple! The stripe-y bits of his shirt, all triangular-like. The triangle of his lower jaw. MORE TEETH. He's like a blue-eyed naive dinosaur baby. He's not at all smart.
Love.
just a little criticism....for me there is something contrived about the little portraits in the hallway... perhaps too obviously zeroing in on the "idea" of portrait or caricature... that combined with the easel-sized canvases and old masterish frames feels beneath condo somehow. his paint handling is so incredible - the best - but for me the presentation of these feels too awkwardly faux-current. maybe i'm being too hard on him because he's one of my very favorite painters.
the drawings in the back....oh yeah.
Have to see this show. I like the jpegs on the gallery site. It's funny how they remind me of Dana Schultz. They also remind me of Picasso a lot as does a lot of his work. His sense of humor is very welcome in the art world. There is this psychological edge in his work that doesn't seem to rest. Just look at Symphony I, 2005.
It's the art/kitsch tension that I think is beneath him. Let them be kickass paintings without the irony. Just sayin.
I like!
I've noticed that a lot of new art has an editorial illustration feel to it. Just look at the last three posts. Agree or disagree?
Lisa Yuskavage
Honeymoon
1988
$1,024,000
Sotheby’s New York
May 10, 2006
Cecily Brown
High Society
1997-98
$968,000
Sotheby’s New York
May 10, 2006
Not bad for the ladies. I think Marlene Dumas is the only one to do so well.
Condo without irony would not be Condo. Would not be right.
This stuff is genius. It has it all.
This child can be helped! Love his work, great imagination, always a surprise.
i will try to hunt down a copy for you blueblaz i had it at one point, aired on tv.. i was not a fan at all until i saw it to tell you the truth now i am huge! he is the real deal. & j waters was out front of the opening.
"editorial illustration feel"
like this
Tres conceptual - there's a blandness to the STYLE of condo - and to the preceeding images...in the tradition of pop - blending of corporate illustrational vanilla.
You saw a lot of this sort of style in the nineties - in annula reports and financial brochures.
Kostabi is annoyingly ingratiating with his corporate schtick.
Theres a sameness to it all:
regardless of medium
power to the people
disturbing
Picasso, Don Martin & Francis Bacon all rolled into one.
Real real deal.
I feel about this painting the way I felt watching the movie ET, where everyone else loved it and I hated the creature so much I walked out. Must be powerful art. I'm trying to like it. Can't yet.
Zipthwung,
I'd lump Condo into the editorial category if the work weren't so intrinsically PAINTED, but it is painted.
Just look at the purple!
Can't wait for this one since the last show was so good.
see the movie, i will hunt it down again... he has a special majkic little world that these creatures are from. not kastobi at all. the other side of the coin.
yeah paint application and surface - warmth and chill. Neutral and active. Kostabi is inert.
The other criticism is that these could be considered monsters (monsters being "masklike" (as stated above)or cartoons), and monsters are...too easy?
Rigour!
But I like monsters.
yeah, zip, Condo is very "ert."
very true, bunko this is a very very simple sketch... but i like to say put this posting window above the face and look at the architecture of the space below the character and think, - do they relate? could i be missing something?
I like some of the other paintings in this show. I don't really care for this painting though. The mouth throws me off. I don't like the clown faces either but for the most part he is a great painter in a period when great painting is hard to come by. I mean there are great painters out there but for the most part most consider it to be dead. I think it and sculpture are the only true art forms. Video and conceptual art are so trendy and lack substance. Sometimes it works but for the most part its crapola.
i think painting and sculpture are to established and just considered "art" by default, pre-cannonised. in a markets market these days! - OF COURSE there are the dimonds but you got to be good in video or conceptual art in the real world to keep it going..
Well all painting isnt good but to me video and installation art are gimmicks. If done well it can be a great thing but it usually falls short. I did see an installation on the Holocaust a few years back that was really good and a few other things in between. When I was in Chicago recently I saw a piece on Samuel Beckett that I didnt really care for. The idea of it was ok but the piece itself fell on its face. Anyone from Chicago out there?
if you frequent NYC's Chelsea galleries check out http://chelseaartgalleries.com/ it offers a wealth of info...
hey! thats big red - cool... i did phish tour for a while they were preformace artists at one point. i would not say album covers are 'illustration' i don't think that way of mike kelly, richard Prince or say Howard Finster
"I think the influence this artist has had on the work of younger artists like Dana Shutz and Lamar Peterson is quite obvious. "
Quite obvious. THe influence of Picasso still resonates, too. I am a huge admirer of Picasso, ever since I saw the Matisse Picasso show at the MOMA, Queens.
At htat show I saw that the tow were having a conversation. I realized that they really had something going on.
Genres. Styles. Traditions. Axioms. Nature- Nurture.
MONSTERS ARE EASY.
Even cubism became a fucking sleepwalk, stylisticly. Picasso doing Picasso.
Its all illustration. Duchamp said so, too, I think. Who cares he's dead.
If it puts you in another place its good. If it makes you feel smarter, its high. If it makes you smarter then its really high. Orbit.
yea for those who don't know about Don Martin you just have to google him. you will be laughing all day.
i just wanted to go on record as being someone who despises Condo's work. I think this painting is horrible. I hate this work more than I hate Carol Dunham's work.
there I said it
I had Dunham walking through my studio that I shared with other students back in the day. I remember him checking my paintings out and not really saying anything. He seems like a very intellectual dude which his paintings don't necessarily scream. I can't really say I like his paintings either. They are really easy paintings to hate maybe because they are SO obvious, at least to me, about the ID and our ugly side. He paints like a fucked-up child. Maybe it's this fucked-up side of ourselves that I hate and not his work. I can't decide. But he picked Banks Violette for his first show ever while at school and I can see why, now, that he picked him. By the way, Condo rocks, what's to hate?
!!!! Also, Painter, we, painters, get inspired by other stuff besides just paintings. I'd like to see comments on 3D and film too.....!!!!
Vlahos Boyiajees I would like to do a sculpture and drawing blog along with this one. But I am a small opeation of one so I would need a helper.
To paraphrase Bada, I hate this painting.
It's slick, it's cynical, if it weren't for the luscious purple it would be a bad cartoon. Irony is too easy. It's an excuse for failing to engage. Can we step back from ourselves for one second and look at what we've become, as a society and as a community of artists, when we take this kind of ugly, lifeless stuff seriously? Are we apprehending the real world at all, or just our take on someone's take on someone's take on something tired and arcane to begin with?
SLick and cynical can be good. This isn't that slick. And it could be more cynical.
This guy is a seriously good artist and this show is great. His achilles heel is that he sometimes lets too much out of his studio by that I mean the less good ones will be shown amung the very good ones thus dilluting the whole. But in the end that's what enthusiastic artists do, they are sometimes the last to know what's good and what's not. i.e. the small paintings in the hall, too silly?
Wow!!! Your site is beautiful!! I love the artwork.
Deirdre G
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This post was awesome. Like it. I think this art fit for my living room.
Paula M
condo Philippines
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