GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957)
GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957)
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On occasion, Christie's has a direct financial int… Read more Property from a New York Charitable Family Trust
GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957)

The Wooden Horse

Details
GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957)
The Wooden Horse
oil on canvas, in artist's chosen frame
90 x 95 in. (228.6 x 241.3 cm.)
Painted in 1986.
Provenance
Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1986
Literature
V. Raynor, "Art: Isamu Noguchi's Seven Stones," The New York Times, 11 April 1986, p. C30.
S. Baker, George Condo: Painting Reconfigured, London, 2015, pp. 123 and 125, no. 142 (illustrated).
Exhibited
New York, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, George Condo: Recent Paintings, April 1986, n.p. (illustrated).
Special notice
On occasion, Christie's has a direct financial interest in the outcome of the sale of certain lots consigned for sale. This will usually be where it has guaranteed to the Seller that whatever the outcome of the auction, the Seller will receive a minimum sale price for the work. This is known as a minimum price guarantee. This is such a lot.

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Julian Ehrlich
Julian Ehrlich Associate Vice President, Specialist, Head of Post-War to Present Sale

Lot Essay

"The key to such a delicate balance lies in Condo's assertion that he 'sees' figures in abstraction, or at least, under the pressure of his process, both forms, and forms of painting, come to resemble their opposites, often with surprising consequences. The pratfalls and pitfalls of resemblance are everywhere in the 'Expanding Canvases' of the 1980s, and indeed in many of the more singular 'abstract' compositions from the same time (Wooden Horse, for example) that reference the forms of figures in only the most ambivalent and ambiguous ways, hovering undecidedly between resemblance and misrecognition. As Condo has remarked: 'you no longer have to say "this is a figure, look what I've done to it". You just eliminated the figure entirely until it was almost a ghost in your brain that was described as pure paint.'"
—S. Baker, George Condo: Painting Reconfigured, London, 2015, p. 123

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