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George Condo Interview: The Way I Think

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George Condo was part of the 1980s wild art scene in New York. In this video, recorded in his New York-studio, the iconic artist shares his life-long love of drawing and thoughts on his artistic expression, which he describes as “artificial realism.”

”I kind of draw like you’re walking through the forest, where you don’t really know where you’re going, and you just start from some point and randomly travel through the paper until you get to a place where you finally reach your destination.” Condo studied music theory at college, but soon realised that it was too formal and rigid for him, and that he needed an art form that would give him more freedom. However, he still approaches his art like a musician, working fast and following the rhythm of the drawing or painting without “missing any of the notes.” The tempo, he feels, is very important when it comes to art.

Condo wants his work to contain clear references to the different artists – from Picasso to Velasquez – they’re inspired by, but with a twist. His painting or drawings are about finding a way in which one can capture a person’s humanity through a portrait – capturing not just the outside but also the inside. Moreover, Condo aims to “turn negatives into positives”, portraying “the ordinary characters that make up our lives, whether it’s the janitor or the bus driver or the school teacher or the principal or the mailman or the truck driver. These are not the glamorous people that you see on the cover of Vogue Magazine, but they are what the world is composed of. And to give them a spot in the world is what I always admired about Rembrandt to a certain degree…”

“I love drawing as much as painting, so why not make your paintings from your drawings, but literally have there be no defined sort of hierarchy between the two mediums?” Condo started making “drawing-paintings”, where you can’t distinguish e.g. paint from pastel, or a line made with a paintbrush or a line drawn in from and thus making the two mediums equal: “There’s no real difference between figurative painting or abstract painting, ‘cause it’s all painting to begin with… You don’t’ have to follow any rules as a painter. If you’re making an abstract painting it doesn’t mean eventually it can’t morph into a figurative one.”

When a famous art historian asked Condo what he called the form of work he did, Condo thought of the description “artificial realism”. Artificial realism gives the painter the opportunity to go back and paint something in a realistic way while still portraying all that which is artificial in our world. In continuation of this, he finds that now everything seems to be “artificial realism” with the fake news that is all around us: “Art is the truth, and everything else is a lie.”

George Condo (b. 1957) is an American contemporary visual artist working in the mediums of painting, drawing, sculpture and printmaking. Condo mixes input from art history’s masters – such as Velasquez, Manet and Picasso – with elements of American Pop Art. He distorts and renews this material so that it stands out and becomes his own: a kind of strange hybrid that blurs boundaries between the comic and the tragic, the grotesque and the beautiful, the classic and the innovative. As part of the wild art scene in New York in the early 1980s, Condo was close to painters such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, and worked for Andy Warhol’s Factory, applying diamond dust to silkscreen. Condo’s work is in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Whitney Museum, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Broad Foundation in Los Angeles, Tate Gallery in London, Centre George Pompidou in Paris and Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, among others. He is the recipient of an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1999) and the Francis J. Greenberger Award (2005). Condo lives and works in New York City.

George Condo was interviewed by Kasper Bech Dyg at his studio in Soho, New York City in September 2017.

Camera: Jakob Solbakken
Produced and edited by: Kasper Bech Dyg
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2017

Supported by Nordea-fonden

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43 thoughts on “George Condo Interview: The Way I Think”

  6. I don’t know what the hell this videographer was thinking filming him from such an angle. Due to the viscosity and slickness of the medium we get no sense of value of his drawing

  7. Im sorry but at 38:30 this guy signs the art and says, "that is a complete drawing…. wtf seriously that came off lazy af and this dude seems like he has some entitlement where his world works or the world doesn't spin vibe… sorry but i cant

  15. Poor guy, he is so lost in his simplicity that even confuses to be "natural" with having a classical background. Well, in music for example and in arts you can have formal teaching and then become an artist with your own identity. The fact that you don't have a classical background doesn,t make you a good or a bad artist, this will depend on natural skills, style, knowledge of techniques, character among other things. For example Francis Bacon didn't have any formal studies and he was a genious like others but you just paint ugly paintings with no concept behind which make them just ugly, not interesting in the least. This is just one opinion, it,s mine and done with respect didn't mean to offend anybody.

  20. I just ran across this interview. I really enjoyed the entire thing. Thanks George for being so candid and understandable. I am also an artist and I call all art abstraction because what we paint is an illusion or an abstraction of our mind.

  23. I think nothing surprises people anymore. It all has been done. Nowadays artists use the language which is a combination of things that had been done before.

  27. I like to listen what people say , what is the engin that makes them going in their particular direction. Some people choose their path and follow consequently , some are just like a leaf in the wind. Artists or plomber or seamstress , they might be artisan or they may become a real great artist.

  35. if you like georges work, check out the artist bryant giles' pieces…he exact same approach as condo but with a focus on realism, complimentary geometries, and usually anatomical forms.

  37. I've seen a lot of video's and I apreciate when the artist self take he time to explain what art means to him and also to open a door to his iner world. I dont't like 'self-made' artists wich are beginning to say that their art are sold with milions euro, etc. Many artists on youtube are trying only to 'show' some tehnick of some time lapse of their work and I find that the best is to combine tekst and work to a painting. This way we can figure out much the vision, the aspirations and the expectations of an artist. He is not a kind of 'machine' who paint without knowing what he's doing only coping from the big masters. When I can see also that he's busy with fundamental questions about life, people and arthistory than I can consider him complete. So I admire the freedom and the critique vew of art of Condo and also his mature way tot explain everything sometimes with a gliter of dry humor.

  40. hmmm its complete? I dont think it is.. looks unfinished for him.. the interesting thing is actually how much that piece will sell for today.. probably a good $500,000-$750,000.. maybe more for the size.

  42. I don't know who he is, and 5 minutes in I still haven't seen any of his finished work. When an artist discusses work I haven't seen, its impossible to relate to what he says about it. Maybe show the work first?

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