.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Descriptif du lot
A dynamic and tactile eruption of human form, The Picnickers (2009) is a vivid bronze sculpture by George Condo. The work exhibits the same exuberant dialogue with art history seen in his paintings, with two striking figures—of the kind Condo refers to as ‘unedited human disasters’—enjoying themselves al fresco in the manner of Edouard Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (1862-1863) (quoted in S. Baker, George Condo: Painting Reconfigured, London, 2015, p. 181). A female nude faces a seated man, reclining seductively with her head on her hand. With splayed limbs, mountainous peaks and gnarled features modelled in clay—the artist’s fingerprints are everywhere—they resemble swamp creatures or parts of a landscape as much as a human couple. It is a tragicomic burlesque of modernist sculpture, at once playful, monstrous and strangely beautiful.
Condo’s first sculptures, made in Paris in the late 1980s, were constructions of found objects and other materials cast in bronze, recalling the assemblages of Pablo Picasso. Gradually these works took the form of standing figures and busts, with features modelled in clay and plaster before casting. Condo’s raw, textural approach echoed the tactile bronzes of Alberto Giacometti and Willem de Kooning. Having seemingly stopped sculpting altogether by 1993, he returned to the medium in 2001, when, in response to the 9⁄11 attacks on New York, he made a series of gilded bronze busts, calling on the portrait heads of the ancient Greeks and Romans in the spirit of Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy (1872).
Over the following years Condo diversified his sculptures, making text-based works in tribute to jazz musicians and sinuous twists on the sleek abstraction of Constantin Brâncuși. The Picnickers is one of a number of works that more closely parallel his painterly output of the same period, which explored states of human extremity, anxiety and heroism at a time of financial and social uncertainty in the United States. Condo is a distant descendant of the nineteenth-century sculptor Salvatore Albano, and his works—for all their turbulence—have a grace and rigour that gives them a curious dignity. They are, writes Thomas Kellein, ‘almost classical sculptures, which are simultaneously luminous and sepulchral, archly humorous and dark’ (‘Reeling From So Much Truth’, in George Condo: Sculpture, exh. cat. Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zürich, 2003, p. 5).
Condo’s first sculptures, made in Paris in the late 1980s, were constructions of found objects and other materials cast in bronze, recalling the assemblages of Pablo Picasso. Gradually these works took the form of standing figures and busts, with features modelled in clay and plaster before casting. Condo’s raw, textural approach echoed the tactile bronzes of Alberto Giacometti and Willem de Kooning. Having seemingly stopped sculpting altogether by 1993, he returned to the medium in 2001, when, in response to the 9⁄11 attacks on New York, he made a series of gilded bronze busts, calling on the portrait heads of the ancient Greeks and Romans in the spirit of Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy (1872).
Over the following years Condo diversified his sculptures, making text-based works in tribute to jazz musicians and sinuous twists on the sleek abstraction of Constantin Brâncuși. The Picnickers is one of a number of works that more closely parallel his painterly output of the same period, which explored states of human extremity, anxiety and heroism at a time of financial and social uncertainty in the United States. Condo is a distant descendant of the nineteenth-century sculptor Salvatore Albano, and his works—for all their turbulence—have a grace and rigour that gives them a curious dignity. They are, writes Thomas Kellein, ‘almost classical sculptures, which are simultaneously luminous and sepulchral, archly humorous and dark’ (‘Reeling From So Much Truth’, in George Condo: Sculpture, exh. cat. Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zürich, 2003, p. 5).