Following the exhibitions devoted to Basquiat and Haring, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris completes its New York trilogy with a major show dedicated to George Condo, the only one of the three still alive. Curated by Edith Devaney and Jean-Baptiste Delorme in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition unfolds through thematic sections that highlight the breadth and depth of a body of work that began in the 1980s and continues to astonish today. With around eighty paintings, one hundred and ten drawings, and twenty sculptures, the exhibition offers a journey through the major themes that define Condo’s career: the dialogue with art history, the representation of the human figure, and the relationship with abstraction. A rich selection of works on loan from major international institutions - including MoMA, the MET, and the Whitney Museum - and private collections provides the Parisian public with an unprecedented overview of this “portable artist,” as Condo referred to himself in the 1990s. The show opens with a section reminiscent of a classical fine arts museum: here, Condo pays tribute to the great masters - from Rembrandt to Goya, from Rodin to Picasso - by quoting and distorting their styles in a series of transformations that have become a hallmark of his language. This is followed by a selection of works from the so-called Artificial Realism period, revealing how the artist blends traditional techniques with references to urban culture, comics, and street art, generating a sense of temporal disorientation. At the heart of the exhibition lies a more intimate section focused on Condo’s relationship with literature, particularly with writers of the Beat Generation. A dense graphic art cabinet then retraces his works on paper from his first drawings to his latest ink and pastel compositions. The focus shifts to the human figure, with “humanoid” portraits combining realistic features and grotesque distortions to depict the complexity of the psyche. The notion of “Psychological Cubism,” coined by the artist himself, finds full expression in the Double Portraits from 2014-2015. The exhibition concludes with an exploration of abstraction: from the frantic canvases of the 1980s to monochromes in black, white, and blue, and finally to the very recent works from the Diagonal series (2023-2024), which demonstrate Condo’s ongoing ability to reinvent his pictorial vocabulary. A fully immersive room dedicated to the Black Paintings invites visitors to a sensory and introspective experience, closing a retrospective that is both comprehensive and strikingly contemporary.
