| ISBN : | 978-3-03764-638-0 |
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| Publication : | October 2025 |
Published to accompany George Condo’s major solo exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (October 2025–February 2026), this volume proposes a comprehensive overview of the American artist’s work, spanning his artistic practice in painting, sculpture, and drawing from the early 1980s to now.
Emerging during the effervescence of the early 1980s in New York, like his artist friends Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, when figurative painting was in full bloom, George Condo (b. 1957, Concord, New Hampshire; lives in New York) stands out for his appropriation of past European styles and techniques to address contemporary issues. After having worked at Andy Warhol’s Factory, between 1983 and 1995 he lived in Cologne and Paris, a period which was very formative, notably for his knowledge of European painting and culture. With his quick and precise brushstrokes, he produces pieces of rare intensity, centered on the human figure. Described by French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari as “art that reflects schizoid potentialities,” Condo’s work explores the paradoxes of the human psyche and the grotesqueness of society. It also demonstrates the artist’s ability to absorb the visual world that surrounds him, mixing popular culture and scholarly references without hierarchy.
This book gathers together 200 illustrations from all his major series, an illustrated biography of the artist, and new essays by exhibition cocurator and former London Royal Academy of the Arts curator Edith Devaney (“Existential Traveler”), exhibition cocurator and Musée de Rochechouart Director Jean-Baptiste Delorme (“A Moveable Feast: George Condo and Paris”), journalist and music producer Vincent Bessières (“Painting Dissonance: On Condo and Music”), as well as a conversation with Condo by German philosopher Marcus Steinweg. Bringing new approaches to Condo’s work, such as his relationship to music and his years in Paris, this publication seeks to renew our understanding of one of the most important voices in contemporary painting.
Published with Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris and Paris Musées.
